Price, Fifty Cents. 

It^elandand 

The Pope. 

A BRIEF HISTORY 

OF 

PAPAL INTRIGUBS 
Against Irish Liberty 



FROM 



Adrian IV. to Lieo Xlll. 



By James G. Maguire, 

JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURt OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALrFORNIA. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



@I|Hjt* ^J^MJrfit 3n* 

Shelf i.f£t 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Il^elcind and 

The Pope. 

A BRIEF HISTORY 

OF 

PAPAL INTRIGUBS 
Against Irish Liberty 

FROM 

fldman IV. to lieo XIII. 



By James G. Maguire, 

> V 
JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. 



" The Rescript jnust be obeyedy 

J. Cardinal Simeoni. 

"Aye, 
They can crush us as in ages flown. 
What to them is a nation's anguish ? — 
Nothing more than a dying groan." 

Una. 



SAN FRANCISCO: 

JAMES H. BARRY, 429 MONTGOMERY STREET, 

1888. 






Copyright, 1888, by James G. Maguire. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



DEDICATION. 



To the heroes who, in spite of popes and kings, 
poured their blood on the altar of Irish liberty, and 
thus kept alive the patriot flame, through the long 
centuries of Ireland's night of slavery ; and to all 
the living priests and people who believe that Ire- 
land's struggle for liberty should not be postponed 
to await the pleasure of any foreign potentate, this 
book is affectionately dedicated. 

The Author. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
Dedication 3 

Preface 5 

Chapter I — Introduction 9 

II— Bull of Adrian IV 14 

III — The Bull of Pope Alexander III. and the Synod 

of Cashel 20 

IV — Humiliating the Irish Priests and People 26 

V — Papal Interference with Irish Struggles for 

Liberty after the Conquest 38 

VI— The Religious Wars 41 

VII — A sop to Cerberus 45 

VIII — The Repeal Movement killed by a Rescript. ... 49 
IX — The Young Ireland Movement killed by Bishops 

and Priests 57 

X — The Fenian Movement Opposed by the Church 71 
XI — The Home Rule Movement Opposed by the 

Church 73 

XII — ^The Land League Opposed by the Pope 76 

XIII— The Last Rescript 83 

XIV — Plan of Campaign and Boycott vs. Rack Rent, 

Eviction and Rules of Estate 84 

XV— Pope Leo's Boycott on Dr. McGlynn 96 

XVI — Vatican Politics — the Italian Ring 100 

XVII— Conclusion 110 

List of Authorities 114 

Appendix A — Full translation of the Bull of Pope Adrian IV. 

granting Ireland to King Henry II 115 

Appendix B — Full translation of the Bull of Pope Alexander 

III. confirming the grant of Adrian 116 

Appendix C— The text of the last Rescript 117 



PREFACE. 

This book is written to supply what I conceive 
to be not only a demand but a real necessity. Its 
purpose is to show the wrong and injustice of 
papal interference with the struggles of the Irish 
people to regain the national independence which 
they lost through the treachery of an English 
pope. 

To show the extent, persistence and deadly 
character of that interference. 

And to point out the necessity, and the patriotic 
duty of firmly and constantly rejecting and resist- 
ing every political edict, issued by a pope or inqui- 
sition, respecting Irish affairs. 

I am painfully aware of the extreme difficulty, if 
not impossibility, of exposing and condemning 
the political errors and faults of one who is the 
spiritual head of a church, without working some 
injury to the church which he represents. 

To the delicacy and difficulty of this position, I 
attribute the otherwise remarkable circumstance 
that the very interesting and important facts 
herein set forth have never before been presented 
in any collected or connected form. 

But the occasion demands that those facts be 
now given to the world fully and fairly, without 
either malice or timidity. Whatever the reader 



O PREFACE, 

may think of the conclusions, which I have freely 
and candidly stated, he will find the statements of 
fact to be reliable and can readily verify all the 
more important of them by referring to the author-, 
ities which I have fully cited. 

I conceive it to be a most marvelous record of an 
alliance of centuries, which has been characterized 
by constant and simple faith and confidence, on 
one side, and equally constant duplicity, ingratitude 
and tyranny on the other. 

To the ultramontanes who may read this book 
and whose stereotyped criticism I may now fairly 
anticipate, I have but to say, that it is not my 
fault that the spiritual heads of the Catholic 
Church claim also to be, by divine right, temporal 
rulers, theoretically, over all nations, and in ter- 
rible reality over Ireland. 

It is not my fault, but more shame to them, if 
the publication of the political history which they 
have made, shall disadvantao-e the church whose 
spiritual interests were confided to them, and 
should have been their first and constant care. 

On this subject I can only add that I am not 
in the business of proselyting and disclaim any 
such purpose. 

I speak neither as a friend nor as an enemy of the 
Catholic religion, and have said not a word con- 
cerning its doctrines, its principles, its sacraments 
or its forms. 

The truth or falsity, the soundness or unsound- 
ness of the articles and rules of faith of that reli- 



PREFACE. 



gion have nothing to do with Ireland's right to in- 
dependent nationality or to Home Rule. 

I desire, above all things, to separate those two 
questions by a wide and unmistakable line, and to 
distinguish, as well as I may, between the dual 
— religious and political — capacities which the 
Pope, unfortunately, occupies. 

I speak as an American descendant of the 
Irish race; as an admirer of the Irish character; 
as a sympathizer in the struggles and trials of the 
Irish people and in their hereditary aspirations for 
liberty. 

That a man may be a good Catholic and at the 
same time an Irish patriot, seven centuries of so- 
called "sedition," in which the people were often 
led by their soggartJis aroon, attest. 

That a man may reject the tenets of the Catho- 
lic religion and yet be an equally good Irish 
patriot, bear witness: Grattan, Emmet, Wolfe 
Tone, Davis, Mitchel, Parnell, and all the brave 
leaders and soldiers of Protestant faith, who, for 
more than a century, have graced and glorified the 
political and military struggles for Irish liberty. 

While I believe and declare that religion has 
and should have nothing to do with Irish poli- 
tics, I have, in writing this book, a purpose which 
the public mind will not wholly disconnect from 
religion, principally because the art and finesse of 
religio-political Italian statesmanship have so 
interwoven questions of religion and politics. 

That purpose is to assist in raising rhy father's 



O PREFACE. 

countrymen and my own kinsmen above that 
groveling- fear of the Pope, which makes so 
many of them nerveless when he strikes a blow at 
their country and their race, and above their 
present discreditable confidence in men who have 
proved themselves " the veriest slaves of treach- 
ery." 

There is no other people on earth that the Pope 
would treat as he is treating, or as he has treated, 
the Irish; and this is simply because there is no 
other people on earth — not even one of the half- 
Indian states of South America — that would tol- 
erate such political interference at his hands. 

The Pope, in this respect, enjoys the unenviable, 
not to say infamous, distinction of being dangerous 
only to those who confide in him. I confidently 
expect that my work will meet with the approval 
not only of Irish patriots, of all shades of religious 
belief, but that it will be acceptable to the think- 
ing Catholics of every country, who cannot fail to 
realize how greatly the true interests of the Catho- 
lic Church would be advanced by relieving it of 
the incubus of political intrigue against which my 
blows are aimed. 

James G. Maguire. 

San Francisco, June 4th, 1888. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

" The Holy Father must have been misinformed 
by evil advisers, or he would never have taken 
sides with English tyranny and landlord robbery 
against our sorely oppressed and long suffering 
people/' said a devout Catholic and brave but dis- 
heartened Irish patriot to me a few days since. 
"Do you think," I asked, "that Archbishop 
Walsh, who has been for some time in Rome con- 
sulting with the Pope on the Irish question, made 
false statements to the detriment of his people ?" 
"Oh, no, indeed," he replied. "I refer to the 
Duke of Norfolk, Errington, Monsignor Persico 
and other anti- Irish aristocrats and Castle Catho- 
lics, who are, unfortunately, nearer to His Holi- 
ness than are the friends of Ireland." * 

This good man is but one among thousands, 
aye millions, who firmly believe that the Pope has 
been imposed upon by false information concern- 
ing the Irish question. 

The absurdity of this theory must be at once ap- 
parent to all who stop to think that there are in Ire- 



lO IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

land about twenty-eight bishops and archbishops, 
and thousands of priests, all in the immediate ser- 
vice of, under the control of, and in direct com- 
munication with, the Vatican, and that this great 
and intelligent body of men are thoroughly con- 
versant with the minutest details of the every-day 
life of the people of all parts of Ireland. 

To say that he is ignorant of the true state of 
Irish affairs is to assume that he does not think 
the Irish priesthood worth consulting; and, to say 
that he has been deceived by a few English and 
pro-English intriguers, is to assume that he at- 
taches more value to the statements of a few 
secret emissaries than he does to the solemn offi- 
cial testimony of this great body of pious and de- 
voted bishops and priests. 

No, the Pope is not misinformed concerning 
the Irish question. He has acted deliberately, 
upon full knowledge, and upon a resolution 
formed more than one year ago, and, like his 
sudden support of Bismarck, " the arch enemy 
and persecutor of the Catholic Church," this act 
had a political price, which it is to be hoped Lord 
Salisbury may never be able to pay. 

But, you may ask : "What evidence have you 
to support the statement that the present papal 
blow at the Irish national movement was premed- 



INTRODUCTION. . I I 

itated for more than a year ? " To this question 
I answer by presenting the two principal and all- 
sufficient facts, namely: 

1, Monsignor Persico, in his letter of Octo- 
ber last to the Pope, expressly shows that he was 
sent to Ireland to pave the way for the destruc- 
tion of the Irish National League. 

2. The edict is in perfect harmony with the 
course of the Vatican concerning Irish political 
affairs for more than seven hundred years. 

Monsignor Persico was not sent to Ireland 
"for the purpose of learning, by actual observa- 
tion, the true condition and political methods of 
the Irish people," as the telegraph informed us at 
the time of his visit, but for the purpose of cajol- 
ing and coercing the Irish priesthood into leaving 
and opposing the Irish National League. 

This purpose was disclosed by the publica- 
tion at Rome of a letter sent by him to the 
Pope, in October last, in which he expressed re- 
gret that his mission thus far had been a failure, 
because "the Irish priests would not abandon the 
political struggle of their countrymen, even when 
urged to do so in the name of the Pontiff and for 
the good of the Church." 

While this treacherous ecclesiastical statesman, 
*' this genial confidante and general spy," who, ac- 



12 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

cording to his own confession, was in Ireland as a 
secret enemy of the Irish cause, doing the work of 
*' Bloody Balfour " and his Tory master, he was 
winning loud applause from the Irish people by 
praising "with mimic openness of soul," their de- 
votion and submission to the Holy Father, and 
assuring them of the latter's deep and unwavering 
love. 

It is said that when Cortez, with his little band 
of freebooters, entered the populous and hospitable 
districts of Mexico, he won his way largely by 
teaching the divine truths of Christianity to the 
people whom he had come to rob and outrage, to 
enslave and murder. 

I believe it was Lawrence Sterne who said: 
" Of all the cants that were ever canted in this 
world, the cant of hypocrisy is the worst." 

But the whole history of Vatican interference 
with Irish politics shows an unbroken line, for 
seven hundred years, of acts hostile to the liber- 
ties and natural rights of the Irish people. 

The subjugation of Ireland to English rule, as 
is well known to all students of Irish history, was 
not accomplished by the force of English arms, 
but by the decree and grant of Pope Adrian IV.,* 

* See full translation of bull, Appendix A. 



INTRODUCTION. 1 3 

supplemented and enforced by the decrees and 
orders of Pope Alexander III.* 

While, as I have said, these facts are well 
known to all students of Irish history, and while 
they are fully attested by every Irish historian 
worthy of the name.clerical influences have always 
kept the great masses of the Irish people in igno- 
rance of them, so that to-day not one among a 
hundred of the Irish people knows how their coun- 
try lost her nationality, and still fewer are aware 
of the persistent efforts of the successors of Adrian 
and Alexander to keep Ireland in the slavery to 
which their infamous bargain delivered her. 

I shall, therefore, commence with the beginning, 
and make a plain, brief statement of the facts in 
chronological order, giving specific reference to 
my authorities, so that those who have the leisure 
and desire may conveniently test the accuracy of 
my statements, or study the details of events and 
transactions of which I can here give but a gen- 
eral outline. 

Finding the standard Irish and Catholic histo- 
ries sufficiently full and accurate upon these ques- 
tions for my purpose, I have rejected all others, 
save in the matter of Lord Palmerston's intrigues 
withthe Vatican, the most satisfactory evidence of 

* See full translation of bull. Appendix B. 



14 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

which I find in his biography ; and in the matter 
of the later intrigues of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., 
which have not yet reached the pages of authentic 
Irish history, but which are fresh in the minds of 
all sympathizers with the cause against which they 
were aimed. 



CHAPTER II. 

BULL OF ADRIAN IV. 

In the year 1152 Ireland was a prosperous and 
independent nation, holding " her place among 
the nations of the earth." 

Then it was that: " Argosies, laden with riches 
the rarest, gracefully dipped their proud ensigns " 
to her banner. 

Her people were Catholics, and had for many 
generations looked lovingly to the Pope of Rome 
as their spiritual father, but they neither owned 
nor recognized any political allegiance to him. 
Then, as now, the Irish people were noted for 
their bravery, chivalry and generosity; but, then, 
they were learned* and respected for that most 
priceless quality of respectability — political inde- 
pendence — whilst now, and, alas, through all the 
dark and cruel centuries that have intervened, they 
have been crushed in ignorance, humiliation and 

* Pope Adrian himself was "instructed in philosophy and divinity by 
Marianus O'Gorman, an Irish professor." O'Halloran's Hist., Bk. XIII, 
Ch. Ill, p. 307. . 



BULL OF ADRIAN IV. 1 5 

dependence between the upper and the nether 
millstone of Italian intrigue and British tyranny. 

In that fatal year Cardinal John Paparo appeared 
in Ireland* as the special legate of Pope Eugenius 
III. He was the first Italian legate ever sent to 
Ireland — may Persico be the last! Resummoned 
the bishops and principal priests to the Synod of 
Kells, and there delivered palliumst to the arch- 
bishops, taking their oaths of obedience to the 
Pope. 

From that hour dates the downfall of Irish 
nationality. The spirit of Clontarf never ceased 
to animate them, but from that hour the children 
of Erin, though foremost and bravest in the 
armies of liberty throughout the world, have been 
slaves at home The people who had over- 
whelmed the powerful Danes and driven them 
from their shores, tamely bowed their heads to re- 
ceive the yoke of the Saxons. Why.'^ We need 

* Haverty's Hist. Ireland, Chap. XVI., p. 162. 

+ The pallium is " a band of white wool, worn on the shoulders. It 
has two strings of the same material and four purple crosses worked on it. 
It is worn by the Pope and sent by him to patriarchs, primates, archbishops, 
and sometimes, though rarely, to bishops^ as a token that niey possess the 
'fullness of the episcopal ofifice'. Two lambs are brought annually to the 
church of St. Agnes at Rome, by the Apostolic sub-deacons, while the 
'Agnus Dei' is being sung. These lambs are presented at the altar and 
received by two canons of the Lateran Church. From this wool the pallia 
are made by the nuns of Torre de Specchi. The sub-deacons lay the pallia 
on the tomb of St. Peter, where they remain all night." 

Catholic Dictionary, Addis & Arnold, Tit. "Pallium." 



l6 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

not seek far for the answer. With the coming of 
Cardinal Paparo, his palliums and his oaths of 
obedience, came also the claim of temporal sov- 
ereignty asserted by the Pope. 

This temporal power was speedily turned to the 
Pope's financial and political advantage. In the 
year 1 1 54 Henry 1 1 . became King of England, and 
shortly afterwards sent John of Salisbury to Rome 
as a Royal emissary.'^ The King desired to add 
Ireland to his kingdom, and the Pope desired to 
put Ireland under tribute to the Vatican ; the 
Irish people having previously "paid those 
small dues called Peter's pence to the See of 
Armagh, which the rest of Europe paid to Rome."t 

In the year 1156 Pope Adrian IV. gave to 
Henry II., King of England, a bull granting to 
him the political sovereignty of Ireland; address- 
ing him as " my dearest son in Christ, the illustri- 
ous King of England;" authorizing him " to enter 
Ireland, to reduce the people to obedience under 
the laws, and to extirpate the plants of vice," on 
condition that he would " pay from each (meaning 
from each Jrish family) a yearly pension of one 
penny to St. Peter, and that you will preserve the 
rights of the churches of this land inviolate."J 



* Haverty'sHist., Chap. XVIII., p. i88. 

+ O'Halloran's Hist. Ireland, Bk. XII., Chap. VI., p. 286. 

t This bull, copies of which are in the ancient Vatican records, is pub- 



BULL OF ADRIAN IV. 1 7 

The genuineness of this bull is "attested by all 
of the Irish historians, except Abbe MacGeoghe- 
gan"^ and Thomas Mooney, from Geraldus Cam- 
brensis in 1178, to the Nun ofKenmare in 1876^ 
and the last edition of Haverty by Thomas 
Kelly in 1885.! 

The Nun of Kenmare says of this bull: 
" There can be no reasonable doubt of the authen- 
ticity of this document. Baronius publsihed it 
from the Codex Vaticanus\ John XXII. (Pope), 
annexed it to his brief addressed to Edward II. 
(Edward 111.); and John of Salisbury (Catholic 
Bishop of Chartres, then secretary to the Arch- 
of Canterbury, states distinctly in his Metalogicus, 
that he obtained this bull from Adrian."^; 

To the same effect, citing further proofs, is 
Haverty, II while Dr. O'Halloran ("The Irish 

lished in full, in the original Latin text, by Dr. O'Halloran (Hist. p. 310), 
and full translations are published by O'Halloran (Hist. p. 305); Haverty 
(Hist. p. 189) ; Wright (Hist. Ireland, p. 85) ; Ferguson (The Irish Before 
the Conquest, p. 288); and Walsh (Irish Hierarchy, p. 662.) See Ap- 
pendix A. 

* In his histoiy of Ireland, as translated by Dr. Kelly (p. 18), the Abbe 
states that the bull was procured from Adrian, but he subsequently makes 
an argument to discredit its genuineness. 

+ O'Halloran's Hist., pp. 305 to 311 ; Haverty's Hist., pp. 1S7 to 193 ; 
McGee's Hist. Ireland, Vol. I, p. 136; Carew's Ecclesiastical Hist. Ire- 
land, pp 282-3-6; Cusack (Nun of Kenmare) Hist. Ireland, pp. 274-5; 
McCarthy's Outlines of Irish Hist., p. 24; O'Callaghan's Notes and 
Illustrations in "Macariae Excidium" ; Wright's Hist. Ireland, p. 85; 
Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, pp. 661-2. 

X Hist., p. 275, note. 

II Hist., p. 190 and note. 



1 8 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

r 

Livy") and Dr. O'Callaghan very conclusively 
prove its genuineness. 

St. Lawrence O'Toole and other leading^ bish- 
ops of Ireland conversed with Pope Alexander 
III. about this bull, and his own confirmatory bull, 
at the third general council of Lateran in 1179^ 
and the Pope "became at length convinced that in 
the confirmatory bidef which he had drawn up for 
Henry, he had been grossly deceived, and that the 
terms that were employed in that official document 
were as severe as they had been unmerited and 
uncalled for."* He was justly indignant, but he 
did not recall the bull. 

Gerald de Barri (Geraldus Cambrensis,) a lead- 
ing Catholic prelate of the time of Popes Adrian 
and Alexander, noted for having preached the 
principal sermon before the Synod of Dublin in 
1 1 77, published in the year 1178, during the life- 
time of Alexander, a history of Ireland in which 
he inserted, in full, the bulls of both Adrian and 
Alexander in the Latin text, and their genuineness 
was not challenged. t 

In addition to the frail denials of iVIacGeoghegan 
and Mooney, following him, I have before me a 
very ingenious but radically defective essay by 

* Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, pp. 663-4. 

tO'Halloran Hist., Bk. XIII., Chap. III., pp. 306-7. 



BULL OF ADRIAN IV. 1 9 

Bishop Moran of Ossory,* written" to prove that 
the alleged bull of Adrian was "a great Norman 
forgery." He discredits the statement of Cardi- 
nal Baronius, made three hundred years ago, that 
he had copied the bull of Adrian from the "Vati- 
can Manuscript," because he (Moran) could not 
find the same manuscript three hundred years 
later. 

He also discredits the Bullarmm Romanum (a 
collection of papal bulls made under the authority 
of the Holy See), printed over one hundred and 
fifty years ago. 

He also discredits the statement of John of 
Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, made and pub- 
lished over seven hundred years ago, that he 
(John) had personally received the bull from 
Adrian and delivered it to Henry 1 1. 

Verily, ''faith will move mountains" of histor- 
ical evidence. There are other very conclusive 
proofs of its genuineness, to which he does not 
refer at all. 

Father Burke's statement that this bull was a 
forgery is based entirely on this essay of Dr. 
Moran, and may be dismissed with it.f 

* Irish Am. Library, "English Misrule in Ireland," p. 224. 
+ English Misrule in Ireland, pp. 27-8. 



20 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE BULL OF POPE ALEXANDER IH. AND THE 
SYNOD OF CASHEL. 

Henry II., for various reasons connected with 
the vicissitudes of England, did not make any use, 
now known to us, of the Bull of Adrian for fifteen 
years after receiving it. Adrian being then dead, 
Henry applied to Pope Alexander HI. for a con- 
firmation of the grant of Ireland. I«n the year 
1 1 72 Pope Alexander issued a bull addressed to 
his '' most dear son in Christ, the illustrious Kinof 
of England," and commencing thus : " For- 
asmuch as these things which have been, on good 
reasons, granted by our predecessors, deserve to 
be confirmed in the fullest manner; and consider- 
ing the grant of the Dominion of Ireland by the 
venerable Pope Adrian, we, pursuing his foot- 
steps, do ratify and confirm the same, reserving to 
St. Peter and to the Holy Roman Church, as well 
in England as in Ireland, the yearly pension of 
one penny from every house."* 

That everlasting yearly "penny from every 
house" again — the price of poor Ireland's liberty ! 

* O'Halloran's Hist., p. 306; Wright's Hist., p. 86; Haverty's Hist., p. 
191. 



THE SYNOD OF CASHEL. 21 

It 'has been faithfully paid. England's promise 
to the Vatican has been faithfully fulfilled to the 
letter; but alas, every penny of the tribute has 
been stained with the blood and tears of Erin's 
subjugated children. 

Armed with these bulls, King Henry, who, 
before receiving the last, had entered Ireland 
(October i8th, 1171), claiming it under that of 
Adrian IV., immediately summoned the principal 
clergy of Ireland to meet in conference at Cashel. 

This conference is historically known as the 
" Synod of Cashel." Here the Bulls of Adrian 
and Alexander were read, and, "in the name of 
the Sovereign Pontiff, the clergy and people of 
Ireland were called upon to receive Henry the 
Second of Eno-land as their king-."* 

At this Synod the Pope's Legate presided, St. 
Gelasius, the Primate of Ireland, having refused 
to attend.f 

Mooney (who attempts to prove the bulls for- 
geries, to shield, as far as possible, the honor of 
the Vatican) says that they were read at this 
Synod, and thus graphically describes their effect: 
" Each man looked at his neighbor, not knowing 
wnat decision to make. The ecclesiastics were 

* O'Halloran's Hist., p. 305; Mooney's Hist., p. 561, et seq. 
+ O'Halloran's Hist., pp. 310 and 313; Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, p. 195. 
et seq. 



2 2 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

seized with panic and indecision. Some of the 
clergy inclined to the admonitions of the Pope and 
submitted to Henry, whilst others went their ways 
to their respective provinces, as much in grief as 
in anger. Some of the secondary chiefs of the 
south gave up their territories to Henry, receiving 
the same back to hold as his vassals; and, as this 
act of submission appeared not humiliating, owing 
to the acquiescence of so many of the clergy in the 
ordinance of the See of Rome, Henry obtained 
the adherence of seven counties without striking a 
blozv^* 

Martin Haverty, while admitting the genuine- 
ness of the bulls, also attempts to shield the Popes, 
by claiming that the bulls had very little to do 
with the submission of the Irish people to the rule 
of England. This is contrary to the proofs of all 
contemporaneous history, and is simply absurd. f 
Five hundred and seventy-three years ago, when 
the details of her subjugation were fresh in the 
public and private annals of Ireland, and in the 
full traditions of her sorrowing people, Donnell 
O'Neill, King of Ulster, wrote his celebrated, 
learned, and statesmanlike letter to Pope John 
XXI L, protesting against the great injustice done 
to Ireland by the Vatican, and declaring that 

* Mooney's Hist., p. 561. 
t Hist., p. 189. 



O NEILL S LETTER TO POPE JOHN. 23 

Ireland was subjugated solely by the bull of 
Adrian, 

Here is a striking passage from his letter . 

" During the course of so many ages (three 
thousand years) our sovereigns preserved the in- 
dependency of their country; attacked more than 
once by foreign powers, they wanted neither force 
nor courage to repel the bold invaders: but that 
which they dared to do against force ^ they could not 
do against the simple decree of one of your prede- 
cessors — Adrian r"^ 

Whether the bulls of Adrian and Alexander 
were forged or genuine is a matter of small conse- 
quence compared with the doubly established fact 
that the claim of temporal, kingly authority (as 
distinguished from religious authority) over Ire- 
land by the popes, and the acknowledgment of that 
claim by the Irish people, caused the subjugation 
of Ireland to English rule. If that claim had not 
been acknowledged, the bulls, whether forged or 
genuine, would have been repudiated, and the 
armies of Henry would have been driven into the 
sea.f 

But the genuineness of these bulls is over- 
whelmingly proved by historical evidence, and 

* O'Halloran's Hist., p, 307; Mooney's Hist., p. 564; Haverty's Hist., 
P- 255- 

+ O'Halloran's Hist., p. 305; Mooney's Hist., pp. 560-2-4-8. 



24 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

that which I have cited is, for the present, quite 
sufficient. 

The contradictions amonof recog-nized Irish 
historians, concernino- the reading of the bulls at 
the Synod of Cashel, results, probably, from the 
fact that no formal action was taken on them by the 
Synod as a body. 

But that they were read and that there were in- 
dividual submissions of the clergy to King Henry, 
in consequence, is well attested. 

Henry's only ostensible purpose in summoning 
the Synod of Cashel was to make a pretense of 
carrying out the church reforms confided to him 
by the bulls, and his only real purpose was to se- 
cure, upon the strength of the bulls, the submission 
of as many of the political and religious leaders of 
the country as possible. 

Strange indeed, if he failed to produce or men- 
tion documents from which he expected, and had 
good reason to expect, so much. He did produce 
them and the people were paralyzed by them. Just 
as the Roman populace was paralyzed with terror 
by the excommunication of the gallant Rienzi, 
who had led them in driving the plundering Orsini 
and Colonna families and their brigand followers 
from the Eternal City. 

But the efforts of the Vatican in aid of King 



SYNOD OF DUBLIN. 2$ 

Henry's conquest of Ireland did not end with the 
Synod of Cashel. 

In the year ii 77 a Synod was summoned in 
Dublin by, and was held under, Vivian, the Pope's 
Legate for Ireland. 

"In this Synod," says Rev. P. J. Carew, 
Professor of Divinity in the Catholic College of 
Maynooth, Ireland (citing Dr. Lanigan's Hi&tory), 
"the Legate set forth Henry's right to the sover- 
eignty of Ireland, in virtue of the Pope's author- 
ity, and inculcated the necessity of obeying him 
under pain of excommunication!"^ 

Until that time the Catholic Churches were in- 
violable sanctuaries into which the hunted people 
might flee, and in which their lives were safe 
from murder and their property from spoliation. 
At this Synod of Dublin, the Pope through his 
Legate made Ireland an exception to this rule, 
and gave leave to the English soldiers to enter 
the churches and strip the people of the food 
brought there for safety. t Since these things were 
done by the Vicar of Christ, how terrible to con- 
template what the Vicar of Hell would have done 
under similar circumstances. 



* Carew's Ecclesiastical Hist. Ireland, p. 437 ; Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, 
p. 109; Dolby's Hist. Ireland, p. 31. 
+ Dolby's Hist., p. 31. 



26 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

CHAPTER IV. 

HUMILIATING THE IRISH PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. 

In the year i i8o King Henry, "who persecuted 
the Holy Prelate, St. Lawrence, for his ardent at- 
tachment to the land of his birth, resolved that 
an office of so much importance (the Arch- 
bishopric of Dublin), should not be entrusted to 
an Irishman. "^ * Accordingly on the monarch's 
recommendation, his Chaplain, John Comyn, a 
native of England, was elected to the Arch- 
bishopric of Dublin, by some of the clergy who 
had assembled at Evesham for that purpose, 
/okn was not then a priest, but was in the follow- 
ing year ordained, and was consecrated by Pope 
Lucius HI.," who, at the request of the King, 
released the new archbishop and his arch- 
diocese from the control, and even from the visi- 
tations, of the Irish Primate of Ireland.* 

From that time to the present — from Comyn to 
McCabe, at least — the British Government, as 
well since it became Protestant as while it was 
Catholic, has generally dictated, either directly or 
indirectly, the appointment of most of the Catholic 
archbishops and even bishops of Ireland. It be- 
came at one time a common saying that : " Ire- 
land gets her rent receipts and archbishops from 
England." 

* Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, p. no; Dolby's Hist., p. 33; 



ENGLISH INTRIGUES. 2 7 

Since the reformation, the government negoti- 
ations with the Vatican have been conducted by- 
secret emissaries and are difficult of cHscovery, but 
occasionally an uncovered track is found which 
discloses something, and indicates a great deal more. 
For example, in a letter written by Lord Palmers- 
ton (then English secretary of foreign affairs) to his 
brother, May 12th, 1834, occurs the following : 
" I am sending off a messenger suddenly to Flor- 
ence and to Rome to try to get the Pope not to 
appoint an agitating prelate Archbishop of Tuam, 
and I write a few lines by him to you, as he may 
as well go on to Naples from Rome while the 
Pope is pondering upon his answer."* 

Greville's Memoirs shed further light on this 
subject. Speaking of Lord Melbourne (then 
Home Secretary under Grey's Administration) he 
says : " He told me that an application had been 
made to the Pope * * * * not to appoint 
McHale to the vacant Catholic bishopric. ^ * 
* '* His Holiness said that he 'had remarked 
for a long time past that no piece of preferment 
of any value ever fell vacant in Ireland that he 
did not get an application from the British Gov- 
ernment asking for the appointment.' Lord Mel- 
bourne, * * * «- in reply to my question, 
admitted that Ike Pope had generally conferred the 

* Evelyn Ashley's Life of Lord Palmerston; Chas. Gavan Duffy's Young 
Ireland, p. 211. 



28 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

appointment according to the wishes of the Gov- 
ernment." After commentirjg upon the "regular 
underhand intercourse" estabhshed between the 
Government and the Vatican and the constant 
soHcitation of appointments from the Pope, he 
adds : 'Hhe Pope, who is the object of our ortho- 
dox abhorrence and dread, good-humoredly com- 
plies zvith all, or nearly all, of their requests!'"^ 

On the 14th of September, 1808, the CathoHc 
bishops of Ireland met in synod in DubHn 
and passed, among others, the following resolu- 
tion : " That the Roman Catholic prelates pledge 
themselves to adhere to the rules by which they 
have been hitherto uniformly guided — namely, to 
recommend to his Holiness (for appointment as 
Irish Roman Catholic \yL^O'i^^ only such persons 
as are of unimpeachable loyalty.' '"^ 

This accounts for the pro-English sentiments of 
so many Irish bishops, and accounts for the ap- 
pointment of the Murrays, and Moriartys, and 
Cullens, and McCabes, and so on ad nauseam, ad 
infinitum. 

But, enough; the story of the humiliation and 
degradation of Ireland's patriotic priests to the 
domination of Englishmen, Italians, Spaniards and 

* Young Ireland, p. 211. 
t Haverty's Hist., p. 746. 



ENGLISH FLESH AND IRISH FISH. 29 

anti-Irish Irishmen is a long one, and interesting, 
but the studied attempt to degrade the Irish race, 
as such, is of more importance. 

In the 13th and 14th centuries such race preju- 
dices had arisen between the Irish and Anglo- 
Irish in Ireland that they each established rules, 
excluding the other from their canonries (religious 
colleges) and religious houses. 

Complaint being made to Pope Innocent IV., 
he issued a bull requiring the Irish to admit the 
English and Anglo- Irish to their canonries. 

Complaint being afterwards made by the Irish 
to Pope Leo X., he issued a bull confirming the 
right of the English to exclude the Irish from their 
canonries,"^ 

Under this bull Irish ecclesiastics and students 
were excluded from institutions which had been 
founded and endowed by their own Irish ances- 
tors, t 

"Consistency, thou art a jewel," but, surely, 
Rome cannot be charged with inconsistency in 
dealing with the Irish. She has been consistently 
and constantly unjust and insulting to them. 

She has found them confiding and obedient, 
while she has spurned and spat upon them, and 

* Cambrensis Eversus, by Dr. Kelly, Vol, II., p. 543; Haverty's Hist., 
PP- 253-4, note. 

t Haverty's Hist., p. 255. 



30 IRELAND AND THE TOPE. 

she has spurned and spat upon them inces- 
santly, apparently for no other reason than that 
she has found them still confiding and obedient, 
and that their humiliation pleased and conciliated 
a more independent power. 

There is a general impression to the effect that 
the persecution of the Irish is due mainly to reli- 
gious prejudice, but no man who has read deeply 
of Irish history can harbor such a delusion. 

The Eno^lish orovernment and the Irish land- 
lords (joint persecutors and plunderers of the race) 
care very little to what church an Irishman goes 
while living, or to what sphere his soul may be 
consigned after his death. The pretense to the 
contrary is a hollow sham, but it has a purpose. 
By dividing the people into hostile religious fac- 
tions, and setting them to fight each other, the 
natural power of the Irish is greatly reduced, and 
the difficulty of perpetuating the enslavement of 
both factions is greatly lessened. 

Besides, one of the factions would naturally ally 
itself to the Protestant Government of England, 
while the other would as naturally ally itself to the 
head of the Catholic Church. The Government 
and the Pope acting in concert through the ''reg- 
ular underhand intercourse" of which Greville 
speaks, and which Petre, Errington and Norfolk 



RACE AND RELIGION. 3 1 

have so lately exemplified, the wisdom of the Gov- 
ernment's promotion of religious feuds among the 
Irish people is apparent. 

"It should not be forgotten that it has always 
been the policy of the English Government in 
Ireland to foment religious dissentions there as a 
powerful means of perpetuating its own dominion."^ 

That religious differences are not the cause of 
Irish persecution, is conclusively proved by the 
fact that the most cruel and barbarous persecution 
of the Irish people took place during and through- 
out the period of four hundred years before Eng- 
land became protestant; and while the Kings of 
England were the Pope's "beloved sons in Christ," 
as they were affectionately termed. 

Speaking on this subject. Rev. R. A. Byrne, in 
a lecture on "The Free Schools of Ancient Ire- 
land," pertinently said: "In 1380 it was enacted 
(at Downpatrick Abbey) that no mere Irishman 
should be allowed to make his profession in the 
Abbey. 

This is but in keeping with the spirit of English 
Catholic domination in Ireland everywhere. This 
anti-Irish feeling is of no modern date, and by no 
means owes its oriein to the introduction of Pro- 
testantism. HenyVIII. was a bad man * ^ 

* Ireland of To-day, by M. F. Sullivan, p. 369. 



32 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

but the deadly wounds that laid E^dn low zvere 
struck by the assassin hands of his Catholic fore- 
fathers!'^ 

It was this same English Catholic spirit that an- 
imated that typical English priest, Monsignor 
Capel,t when he said at Metropolitan Hall, in this 
city, that, in his opinion, "the Irish famine of 
1847-8 was a God's blessing." 

Daniel O'Connell, in 1813, said ''The English 
do not dislike us as Catholics; they simply hate 
us as Irish. "I 

John Mitchell most happily and truly stated the 
situation when he said, that to England the ma- 
terial wealth of the Irish was "far more valuable 
than their souls." 

But the English Protestant people, as a people, 
where they are even partially free from the in- 
fluence of caste, which affects both Protestants and 
Catholics alike, and from that hydra-headed mon- 
ster of bigotry, which in both countries is mis- 
called religion, have no such prejudice against the 
Irish race. This was well proved during the years 
of famine, when "the good will of the English 
people" was shown by their subscription of more 
than two million dollars, to relieve the distress of 

* Ireland as She Is, by J. J. Clancy, p. 82. 

+ "Domestic Prelate to His Holiness Pope Leo XHL" The Pope, p. i. 

% Ireland as She Is, p. 80. 



MARKET VALUE OF IRISHMEN. ^^ 

the Irish; some, at least, of the English people, 
going even without butter on their bread, "in order 
that some money might be saved for the starving 
poor of Ireland."* 

It is therefore not to English Catholics nor to 
Italian Catholics that Ireland must look for sym- 
pathy and succor in her struggle for political lib- 
erty and civil justice, but to the lovers of Liberty 
and Justice, of all shades of religious belief, 
throughout the world. 

She has been sadly handicapped in her struggle, 
by her dependence on the broken reed of Roman 
honor. 

I must close this prolific branch of my subject 
with one more general statement and a couple of 
historical examples. 

Under all "their Catholic Majesties," from 
Henry II. to Henry VIII. (nearly 400 years), the 
Irish people, with the exception of five families, 
were outlaws. They were murdered at will, like 
dogs, by their English Catholic neighbors in Ire- 
land, and there was no law to punish the murder- 
ers.f 

Yet, during all of this unparalleled reign of ter- 
ror, history fails to show a single instance in which 

* The Parnell Movement, by T. P. O'Connor, p. 117. 
t Ireland as She Is, pp. iS to 27 and citations. 



34 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

the power of the Catholic Church was ever exer- 

4 

ted or suggested, by any pope, for the protection 
of her faithful Irish children. 

In the year 131 1, for example, and as a mere 
illustration of the esteem in which Irish lives were 
held by these Catholic princes: "Wm. Fritz 
Roger, being arraigned for the felonious slaying 
of Roger de Cantelon, comes and says, he could 
not commit felony by means of such killing, be- 
cause the aforesaid Roger (de Cantelon) was an 
Irishman and not of free blood. And the jury 
upon their oath say that the aforesaid Roger was 
an Irishman, and theTefoix the said William as far 
as regards the said felony is acquitted." * 

But as the aforesaid Roger was found to be an 
Irishman belonging to the King, the unlucky mur- 
derer was "recommitted to jail, until he shall find 
pledges to pay five marksf to our Lord the King, 
for the value of the aforesaid lrishiuany\ 

I suppose this penalty was imposed under some 
of the English laws against poachmg, but as to 
that, I am not prepared to make a positive state- 
ment, and do not deem the subject of sufficient 
importance for investigation, since the fine was 

* Davies' Hist. Tracts, p. yS, et. seq. ; Ireland as She Is, p. 20; Dolby's 
Hist., p. 58. 
+ About $16.50. 
\ Dolby's Plist., p. 58. 



BOUNTIES FOR KILLING IRISHMEN. 35 

manifestly not imposed for the protection of the 
lives of Irishmen, but merely to preserve them as 
chattels of the King. 

In 1465 an act was passed (indirectly but effec- 
tualty) giving rewards for the killing of Irish- 
men, just as with us rewards are given for the 
killing of coyotes;* and the marriage, fostering, 
gossip and trade of English Catholics with Irish 
Catholics, were made penal offenses by Catholic 
parliaments and Catholic kings.* Under these 
laws, murders innumerable — causeless, cruel, 
sportive murders — were committed with impunity. 
Through their bishops, archbishops, primates and 
legates the popes must have been fully advised 
concerning these atrocities; the English rulers and 
people were Catholics, and as much subject to the 
popes as the Irish now are; yet there was no ex- 
communication and no threat of excommunication, 
by any of the popes, against the English for their 
hellish practices. But assuming that all of the 
pope's legitimate advisers in Ireland were such 
scoundrels and conspirators with the kings, upon 
whose favor their offices depended, yet the plea of 
ignorance could not be made for the popes, 

O'Neill, King of Ulster, and other Irish princes, 

* Ireland as She Is, p. 21. 
+ Ireland as She Is, p. 20. 



36 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

fully represented those grievances to Pope John 
XXII., who paid no attention to them for more 
than twelve years, when, at last, he sent a letter 
to King Edward III., mildly advising that mon- 
arch to adopt a different policy and to reform the 
evils as speedily as possible. On what ground? 
Solely on the ground of expediency; namely: 
" lest it might be too late hereafter to apply a 
remedy when the spirit of revolt has grown 
stronger."* 

If he had been dealino- with the Irish he would 
have sent a bull commanding them to desist with- 
in a fixed time on pain of excommunication, but 
the English, although Catholics, were not so much 
afraid of bulls as were the Irish. Hence their 
milder treatment. 

Hence the Vatican, now so anxious to shield 
the enemies and plunderers of the Irish people 
from peaceful ostracism (boycotting), never lifted 
the scepter of Church authority to shield the Irish 
from wanton murder, outrage and robbery, when 
those crimes, through centuries, were being per- 
petrated by the English Catholic children of the 
Church, t 

* Haverty's Hist., pp. 255-6. 

t King John of England was excommunicated by Pope Innocent HI., in 
the year 1208, while the former was engaged in murdering the Irish and 
devastating parts of their country ; but the excommunication had nothing to 
do with his persecution of the Irish. It grew out of the Pope's refusal to 



FEAR OF PAPAL BULLS. 2)1 

The whole history of the Vatican shows that 
ever since it assumed to be the political as well as 
the religious head of the world (about the year 
860),"^ its universal policy has been to crush 
the weak; to frighten the timid and to conciliate 
the strong and defiant. 

Acting on this policy, and finding the Irish 
people afraid of papal wrath, each succeeding 
pope has traded for political and other advantages 
with England on the strength of his power to 
coerce and subdue the Irish people. 

ajipoint the King's nominee as Archbishop of Canterbury, and the King's 
refusal to allow Stephen Langdon, whom the Pope appointed, to act in 
that capacity. The Pope having frightened the King by inviting the 
Catholic powers of Europe to invade England, this trouble was compromised. 
The King agreeing to accept Langdon as Archbishop and to lay his crown 
at the feet of Cardinal Pandulf, the Pope's Legate, who, after kicking it 
contemptuously, replaced it on the King's head. Henry VIH. and Queen 
Elizabeth, both cruel enemies of Ireland, were also excommunicated: the 
first by Pope Paul IH., in 1535, and the latter by Pope Pius V., in 1570; 
but it is needless to say that these excommunications grew out of troubles 
connected with the Protestant Reformation, and had nothing to do with the 
persecution of Ireland. — ^J. G. M. 

* Catholic Dictionary, Addis and Arnold, Tit. "Tiara." 



38 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 



CHAPTER V. 

PAPAL INTERFERENCE WITH IRISH STRUGGLES FOR 
LIBERTY AFTER THE CONQUEST. 

Many Irish historians are specially severe in 
their strictures on Adrian IV., ''the only English- 
man who ever occupied the Papal throne," as if 
he were the only pope who had ever interfered 
with the political liberties of the Irish people, but 
the acts of his successors are not a whit less 
iniquitous. 

I have already mentioned the bull of Pope Alex- 
ander III., confirming- thegrant of Adrian, and the 
action of his Legate at the Synod of Dublin in 
1 1 77, wherein he threatened the excommunication 
of such of the Irish people as refused to recognize 
the right of King Henry to the sovereignty of Ire- 
land. 

I have also referred to the appointment, by the 
popes, of English and pro-English bishops, arch- 
bishops, primates and legates to rule over the 
church in Ireland. 

These prelates deemed it a part of their duty, no 
doubt a pleasant part, to bless the loyal English 
and to curse the rebellious Irish, in the name of 



O NEILL S REBELLION. 39 

the Catholic Church, in all controversies between 
the races. 

But, so strong was the love of liberty among the 
Irish people (said to have been the growth of 
thirty centuries),* that the ban of the local church 
dignitaries was not sufficient to restrain it ; and, 
even in the 14th century, England was obliged to 
call for special interference from the Vatican. 

In the year 13 15, after the memorable Scottish 
victory on the field of Bannockburn, the princes 
and ^pular leaders of the Irish people invited 
Edward Bruce (brother of Robert Bruce) to enter 
Ireland and make common cause with them in 
their struggle for liberty. Accordingly, on May 
25th of that year, Bruce landed in Ireland with six 
thousand veterans. These were at once joined 
by the Irish armies of Ulster. Castles were 
stormed, cities were burned, "and," says the his- 
torian, " in a very short space of time, no trace 
of the English remained in Ulster but the desola- 
tion of their former dwellings. "f 

Felim O'Connor, King of Connaught (whose 
''dignity and possessions had been restored to 
him by the English "), deserted the English and 
cast his fortunes with the advancing armies of 

* O'Halloran's Hist., p. ig. 
t Dolby's Hist., p. 58. 



40 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

O'Neill and Bruce. *' The O'Briens of Thomond, 
and a great proportion of the toparchs of Mun- 
ster and Meath (then a province), followed his ex- 
ample." Their victorious armies swept over 
Ossory and entered Munster. Here they met with 
some reverses. English supremacy in Ireland 
had reached a crisis, and, in the supreme moment, 
England turned to Pope John XXII. "The 
English interest soon began to revive, and the 
Pope lent his powerful assistance to restore its as- 
cendancy. Sentence of excommunication was 
solemnly pronounced against Bruce and all his 
adherents." * 

Then followed the famous battle of Dundalk, 
which sealed the fate of Ireland for all the suc- 
ceeding centuries. The Pope's decree presided as 
a grim spectre over the battle. " The Irish felt 
that they fought ttnder the curse of the church ; 
while the English were roused by the belief that 
Heaven was on their side, and that the blessing 
pronounced on their arms by the Primate, that very 
morning, rendered them invincible."t 

"Under the curse of the church!" Yes, every 
battle for Ireland's liberty and for natural justice 
to her plundered people, has been fought under 

* Dolby's Hist., p. 59. 
+ Dolby's Hist., p. 60. 



THE CURSE OF THE CHURCH. 4I 

the curse of the church. The Q^allant Irish, who 
never shrank from the whistHng- bullets or the cold 
steel of their armed foes, have always withered 
and failed under the blighting breath of Roman 
curses. 

"How long, O Lord! how long" will the Irish 
people stand divided between two opinions con- 
cerning the Pope's authority to keep them in 
political thraldom ? 

So complete and demoralizing was the English 
victory at Dundalk, and so crushing was the ven- 
gence dealt out to the surviving leaders and help- 
less people, that the Pope's personal services 
were not again required by England in maintain- 
ing the subjection of Ireland prior to the refor- 
mation (1534). 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE RELIGIOUS WARS. 

The religious rupture between England and 
the Vatican, following the abolition of Papal 
authority in English territory, led Pope Cle- 
ment VIII. to foster the Irish rebellion of 
1598 — not for the purpose of freeing Ireland, but 
for the purpose of securing from England better 
terms for the church — and accordingly in the year 



42 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

following, he sent with Oviedo, a Spaniard whom 
he had appointed Archbishop of Dublin, a number 
of indulgences, with power to grant other indul- 
gences, ''to those of the Irish who fought against 
the English in defense of the ancient religion.''^ 

In the year 1643 Father Scarampi came to 
.Ireland as the Legate of Pope Urban VIII., 
bearinof " a bull of indulg-ences to the Irish 
Catholics; and he also brought with him from 
Father Wadding (representative of the Catholic 
Confederates of Ireland, at the Vatican) a sum of 
$30,000, with a quantity of arms and ammuni- 
tion. "f 

The insurrection of 1641 was then in progress, 
but this uprising was not a struggle for Irish 
nationality nor for the political emancipation of 
the Irish people. Its purpose was to secure "a 
partial transfer of property, and certain stipula- 
tions in favor of the Church of Rome, "J the most 
radical demand by the insurgents being " perfect 
religious liberty. "|| 

It was directed and governed by " The Supreme 
Council of the Confederate Catholics of Ireland,"§ 

* Dolby's Hist., p. 238 ; Haverty's Hist., p. 437. 

t Haverty's Hist., p. 502. 

X Haverty's Hist., pp. 480, 508, 517-18. 

II Haverty's Hist., p. 501. 

(j Haverty's Hist., p. 491. 



MUSKETS AND POWDER FROM THE POPE. 43 

and was encouraged not only by the Pope but 
also by the Catholic nations of Europe, especially 
France and Spain,* 

I dwell upon these details not for the purpose 
of belittling the movement, nor to discredit the 
Pope's services, but to show that in its true char- 
acter it was a religious war between Catholic 
Europe and Protestant England, of which Ireland 
was the battle ground, in which the Pope was 
equally interested with the Irish people, and that, 
as in the struggle of i 598, the Irish armies," while 
fighting for the grand and just and holy principle 
of religious liberty at home, were really helping 
the Pope far more than they were being helped 
by him. It may be justly said to have been 
essentially his war, since, by abandoning him, all 
the immunities claimed by the Irish would have 
been promptly secured to them. 

In 1645 Pope Innocent X,, continuing the 
policy of his predecessor, sent a nuncio to the 
Council of the Confederate Catholics, and also 
sent a few men, a little money, some munitions 
and implements of war, and one ship, to aid them 
in the struggle against religious persecution and 
anti-Catholic penal laws.f 

* Haverty's Hist., p. 502-7. 
t Haverty's Hist. , p. 507 . 



44 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

These religious feuds necessarily estranged the 
English Government from the Vatican for at least 
two centuries, and apparently for a much longer 
period. But none may know when or how the 
subsequently discovered "regular underhand 
intercourse"* was established, for it appears that, 
even in the midstof this war,King Charles I. had an 
emissary (Lord Herbert) in secret conference with 
the papal nuncio (Father Rinuccini) with the 
knowledge, however, of the Catholic Council, but 
unknown to the regular representatives of his 
own government. So that when an attempt was 
made to negotiate a peace, the Catholic clergy 
were "secretly acquainted with the intention of 
the King to grant much more than Ormond 
(Lord Lieutenant) stipulated for."t 1 1 would seem 
that very little affecting Ireland for good or evil 
was done by the Vatican from the close of this war 
until the beginning of the present century. 



* See p. 28. 

t Haverty's Hist., pp. 505-6. 



IRELAND AND THE POPE. 45 



CP^APTER VII. 

A SOP TO CERBERUS. 

In the year 1795 a most extraordinary, but 
keen, far-sighted and statesmanHke change was 
made by the English Government in the matter 
of governing the restless, liberty-craving Irish. 

The preceding generations of religious perse- 
cution hadj|[3lended in the minds of the Irish peo- 
ple the trials of the Catholic church and its priest- 
hood with the wrongs of their race."^ The priests 
(a brave, noble and patriotic body of teachers and 
comforters), had become their traditional advisers 
in politics as well as in religious matters. No 
priesthood in the world was ever nearer to the 
hearts of its people, and none was ever more de- 
servedly beloved. Though severe in discipline, 
they were kind, generous and attentive and in full 
sympathy with the national aspirations of the peo- 
ple. Edmund Burke, Wm. Pitt, Lord Granville, 
Chas. J. Fox and other English statesmen resolved 
upon a plan, acceptable to the Vatican, and also 
to the Irish bishops and representatives, by which 
the great influence of the Irish priesthood might 

* Mc'Carthy's Hist, of Our Own Times, Vol. IV, pp. 190 to 196. 



46 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

be made, at least negatively, to serve the purposes 
of the English Government. 

This plan was no less than the establishment of 
a royal college for the education of Irish Catholic 
priests at the expense of the English Protestant 
Government. 

Accordingly, in that year the Pitt ministry 
"recommended the Irish Parliament to appropri- 
ate a grant of eight thousand pounds ($40,000) per 
annum, to support a college for the education of 
the Irish priesthood,"* and that sum was there- 
upon appropriated for the maintenance of the 
Catholic Theological College of Maynooth. 

In the year 1807 (after the Union) this grant 
was increased by the British Parliament to ^13,- 
000 ($65,000) per annum. 

The purpose was to educate for the priesthood, 
in this college, the sons of the common people of 
all parts of Ireland; to educate them out of ''the 
Irish idea" into a sort of patriotic conservatism. 
The idea was not to make them pro-English, nor 
even unpatriotic, for that would destroy their very 
valuable influence with the people, but it was to 
make them more Catholic than Irish, eager to 
struggle for Ireland when unrestrained, but ready 
to sacrifice the cause of Ireland to the cause of the 

* Mooney's Hist., p. 1535. 



RELIGIO-POLITICAL GOVERNMENT. 47 

church, or to church discipline, at any moment, 
upon the call of their religious superiors. 

The priests so selected and educated were to be 
distributed through all the 2,500 parishes of Ire- 
land, at least one being assigned to each parish. 

The strength and elasticity of this new scheme 
of religio-political government must be at once 
apparent. This great body of pro-Irish priests, 
moving and sympathizing with the people, yet 
bound to an absolute obedience, to a small body 
of pro-English bishops, selected for their '^unim- 
peachable loyalty"* to the English Government 
and all controlled as absolutely as if they were 
automatons by an Italiafri pontiff, f the latter (gen- 
erally a member of the Italian nobility, or noblesse 
— a most important fact — as I will presently show), 
being in league with the British Government 
through unofficial, but all powerful, secret ambas- 
sadors. 

This was the scheme, J and from all that we can 
glean from the pages of Irish history, the Vatican 
and the government seem to have been in full 
accord concerning it. 

Its immediate success was greatly hindered by 

* See p. 28. 

t "In his subjects the Holy Father has inculcated the union of all hearts 
in the cause of Holy Church; * * * * ^ loyal obedience of people to 
pastors, and of people and pastors to the Holy See." (The Pope, by Mon- 
signor Capel, Domestic Prelate of his Holiness Pope Leo XHI., p. 38. 

\ See pp. 53-5. 



48 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

the hostility or indifference of those who succeeded 
to the control of public affairs after the increased 
grant of 1807, but the college endowment did not 
cease to form a strong bond of union between the 
government and the Vatican. 

The strength of this bond may be surmised from 
the fact that the Vatican favored a public statute, 
giving the English Protestant government a 
voice m the selection of Irish Catholic bishops. 
My authority for this statement is that in 18 10 
the EnHish Catholics charQ^ed the Irish with 
"wavering in their allegiance to the pope" be- 
cause they opposed the measure,^ and in 18 14 pub- 
liehed a rescript from P(^e Pius VII., expressly 
recommending that concession. Daniel O'Connell, 
subsequently (in 1832), speaking of this period 
said: "the Catholic laity were totally repugnant to 
allow the crown any poive^' to noininate the Cath- 
olic bishops of Ireland. 

We steadily opposed the Court of Rome, as vv^ell 
as the inclination shown by our own prelates; we 
resolutely resisted the wishes of our nobility, and 
of so many of our merchants, backed as they were 
by the almost universal voice of the Catholics of 
England."t 

In view of the secret relations of the govern- 

* Haverly's Hist., p. 748. 
t Haverty's Hist., p. 761. 



THE REPEAL MOVEMENT. 49 

ment and the Vatican, as subsequently discovered, 
this measure seems to have been unimportant, 
since the government already enjoyed the secret 
privilege of doing all that the act contemplated. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE REPEAL MOVEMENT KH.LED BY A RESCRIPT. 

In the year 1829, O'Connell organized the great 
Repeal movement, which has immortalized his 
name, and which gave such bright promise of ful- 
filling the last prayer of the illustrious Emmet. 
It grew with amazing rapidity. Around the 
leader gathered a grand galaxy of statesmen, 
poets, and orators, whose words and works cast 
an imperishable luster over Erin's race, and lent 
a new dignity to the character of man. The peo- 
ple of Ireland believed in them and flocked, not 
in thousands, nor in tens of thousands merely, 
but in hundreds of thousands, to their meetings, 
eager to learn the gospel of political deliverance 
from their lips. The tide of this political move- 
ment rose and rolled with majestic power. Re- 
form after ^form was accomplished. Proposi- 
tion after proposition was made by the English 
Government. Anything short of a total repeal of 
the Union could be had by the Irish for the ask- 



50 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

ing ; and even repeal, with broader, better, hap- 
pier conditions than those that had been lost by 
the Union, seemed almost within reach. O'er the 
long-watched horizon of hope deferred, the sun- 
burst of freedom was breaking. But lo ! the God- 
dess of Irish Liberty, lately so joyful, is weeping. 
She faints, she reels ! What evil fortune has be- 
fallen her .-^ Alas! the fangs of the Vatican ser- 
pent have been driven again to her heart. The 
learned and patriotic priesthood of Ireland had be- 
come the teachers and leaders of the people of this 
movement, in every parish. Pope Gregory XVI., 
in the year 1843, '" at the urgent instigation of the 
British Ministry, through the Austrian Ambassa- 
dor at Rome, and through the more direct agency 
of a Mr. Petre, who, it appears, had acted on be- 
half of England at the Court of the Holy See " * 
issued a rescript commanding the priests of Ire- 
land to refrain from attending the repeal meet- 
ings. This treacherous ^nd unexpected blow had 
a stunning effect upon the movement. It silenced 
at once thousands of its active and trusted leaders. 

It was as if all the commissioned officers of their 
mighty army had been captured at once by the 
enemy. 

O'Connell saw in this rescript the doom of his 



* Mooney's Hist., Vol. H., p. 1530. 



KILLED BY A RESCRIPT. 5 1 

race and country; the blasting of all his cherished 
hopes. 

He rose in the grandeur of his almost super- 
human power to meet and turn the blow of the 
Holy See. He published a letter to prove that 
the rescript was an illegal interference with the 
civil liberties of the clergy.* In the agony of his 
soul be uttered his famous cry: ''As much religion 
as you please from Rome, but no politic sJ' 

He called upon the clergy to stand by the 
movement and they did, at least mechanically, re- 
spond. Mooney thereupon says: "The clergy 
are as much repealers as they ever were, and the 
current of agitation goes on quite as steadily and 
powerfully as before the document was issued. "f 

Alas ! the events prove the contrary. During 
the paralysis, which resulted from the blow, the 
Tatal decay of disentegration had set in. 

The priests came forward as before, but not 
with the firm step and earnest purpose of their 
former enthusiasm. They wavered between love 
of country and vows of obedience. The mighty 
movement, then in its prime, J which had grown 
and flourished and triumphed for fifteen years,' 
withered and died. Within three years from the 

* Mooney's Hist., pp. 1 530-1. 
t Mooney's Hist., p. 1531, 
X Haverty's Hist., 786-7. 



52 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

date of the rescript it had joined the empire of the 
eternal past. 

Poor O'Connell, most faithful son of the Church, 
truest friend of the Vatican, ' he must have felt 
most keenly: 

"How colder than the wind that freezes, 

Founts that but now in sunshine played, 
• Is the congealing pang which seizes 

The trusting bosom when betrayed." 

He died at Genoa of a broken heart on May 
15th, 1847, and strangely willed his heart^" to the 
destroyers of his life and his country. f 

THE PRICE OF THE RESCRIPT. 

What was the consideration which moved the 
Vatican to issue the rescrij^t ? 

As it was the result of secret negotiations, the 
details of which have never been directly published 
or made known, it is impossible to say, authorita-* 
tively, what was its price ; but certain it is that 
shortly before and shortly after its issuance the 
British Government made legislative concessions 
to the Church which were most pleasing to the 
Vatican. 

The first was the repeal of the obnoxious stat- 

* The Parnell Movement, p. 69. 

t It is but just to his memory to state that he was then suffering from 
softening of the brain, superinduced by the mental agony involved in 
witnessing the dying struggles of his cherished movement. Young Ireland, p. 
531; the Parnell Movement, p. 13. 



PRICE OF THE RESCRIPT. 53 

ute of Mortmain, in 1842. The repeal of this law 
was a just and proper measure, and was generally- 
supposed to have been forced from the government 
by the Repeal Association, but, in the light of 
events following so closely after it, there may be 
some force in the suggestion that it was in part 
the result of the repeal agitation and in part the 
price of its destruction. 

The other concession was an act of Parliament 
passed in 1845, increasing the grant to Maynooth 
College from ^13,000 to ^26,000 ($130,000) per 
annum, and making an additional appropriation of 
^30,000 ($150,000) for the enlargement of its 
buildings. 

Speaking of this grant, Mr. Thomas Power 
O'Connor says : " Sir Robert Peel, by the con- 
cession of a larger grant to Maynooth, still further 
disintegrated the forces of O'Connell by bringing 
pressure on the Vatican, and, through the Vatican, 
on some of the bishops ; and so O'Connell's 
power began gradually to melt away." * 

On the passage of this act, Richard Lalor Shiel, 
Catholic member of Parliament for Dungarvan, 
who had discredited his patriotism by accept- 
ing an appointment to office under the 

* Parnell Movement, p. 15. 



54 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

English Government, '^^ made a most remark- 
able speech, openly avowing, reviewing, and 
enforcing the purposes of the original College 
grant, of which it may not be uninteresting to 
quote a few passages here : " You are taking a 
step in the right direction/' he said. " You are 
advancing in a career of which you have left the 
starting post far behind, and of which the goal 
perhaps is not far distant. You must not take the 
Catholic clergy into your pay, but you can take the 
Catholic Church under your care. * * * May- 
nooth was founded in a great measure at the sug- 
gestion of the aposjle of order, the great Edmund 
Burke. Let him be assured that he has made 
great progress in the art of governing Ireland, by 
whom the works of Edmund Burke are perused 
with admiration. That sagacious man saw that it 
was not to the interest of Protestant England that 
the priesthood of Catholic Ireland should be edu- 
cated in France ; he thought that evils could arise 
from a French and Irish ecclesiastical fraterniza- 
tion ; he did not wish that French principles 
should be imported into every Irish parish, and 
he denounced the introduction of a Gallo-Hiber- 
nian establishment into Ireland. Edmund Burke 
was of opinion that the Irish Catholic priesthood 
should be educated by the state and for the state. 

* Parnell Movement, p. 76. 



PRIESTS TO KEEP DOWN SEDITION. 55 

Give the Catholic priest and the Irish Protest- 
ant proprietor a common interest in maintaining 
the institutions of their country and their reconcil- 
iation will be immediate and complete. Indeed 
the only danger to be apprehended is, that their 
alliance may become too unqualified and too com- 
pact. * * * * Great ability will be allured into 
Maynooth — gold for genius has a magnetic power. 
* * * Locate in every parish an educated Cath- 
olic priest, whose mind has undergone the process 
of literary refinement, and you will accomplish 
much in the way of national amelioration. * * * 
Even if the sum to be granted were five times 
what the minister recommends you to concede, 
there is so much true economy in the results of 
wise legislation that your very love of saving 
should induce you to act with liberality to Ireland. 
Are not lectures at Maynooth cheaper than State 
prosecutions? Are' not professors less costly than 
crown solicitors ? Is not a large standing army, 
and a great constabulary force, more expensive than 
the moral police with which, by the priesthood of 
Ireland, you can be thriftily and efficaciously sup- 
plied r'^ 

Why did Shiel suppose that the priests educated 
at Maynooth would render the same service for 

* Shiel's Speeches, by MacNevin, p. 338, et seq. 



56 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

England that had previously been rendered by- 
state prosecutors, crown solicitors, the standing 
army, and the constabulary force? 

Why did the English Government believe the 
promise and make the grant ? 

There can be but one answer. The English 
Government, then in secret diplomatic correspond- 
ence with the Vatican,* had satisfactory assurances 
that none but pro-English bishops and archbish- 
ops would be appointed for Ireland, and that, by ed- 
ucating her priesthood into a sufficiently rigid polit- 
ical subserviency to their religious superiors, they 
might readily be made the unconscious instru- 
ments of English tyranny, and might ultimately 
aid in eliminating the spirit of nationality from the 
Irish character. 

These, at least, were the hopes and expecta- 
tions of the English Government, and, if they have 
in anything failed, the failure has certainly not 
been the fault of the Vatican or its Anglo-Irish 
bishops, as we shall see. 

* Seep. 28. 



IRELAND AND THE POPE. 57 



CHAPTER IX. 

YOUNG IRELAND MOVEMENT KILLED BY BISHOPS 
AND PRIESTS. 

When the repeal movement passed away, the 
spirit of Irish nationality was represented by the 
Young Ireland Party — "the men of '48." 

Of this party the illustrious Alexander M. Sul- 
livan says : "They were pre-eminently the party of 
religious tolerance. The leading idea, in what 
may be called their home policy, was to break down 
the antagonism between Catholics and Protestants 
in Ireland."* 

The following lines, from the pen of the immor- 
tal Thomas Davis, well illustrates the noble and 
truly fraternal spirit of the movement : 

' 'What matter that at different shrines 
We pray unto one God ? 
What matter that at different times 
Our fathers won this sod ? 
In fortune and in name were bound 
By stronger links than steel ; 
And neither can be safe or sound 
But in the other's weal. 

***** 
And oh, it were a gallant deed 
To show, before mankind, 
How every race and every creed 

Might be by love combined — , 

Might be combined , yet not forget 
The fountains whence they rose. 
As filled by many a rivulet 
The stately Shannon flows." 

* New Ireland, p. 98. 



58 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

Equally grand, liberal and inspiring was his 
famous "Orange and Green," addressed to his 
fellow Protestants of Ulster, in which these lines 
occur : 

" Freedom fled us ; 

Knaves misled us ; 
Under the feet of the foeman we lay ; 

But in their spite 

The Irish unite 
For Orange and Green will carry the day." 

In like strain wrote also those glorious daughters 
of Erin: " Eva,"=^ " Mary,"t and " Speranza."J 
In one of the last poems of " Speranza," pub- 
lished in the Nation, occurs the following : 

' ' We are blind, not discerning the promise, 
'Tis the sword of the spirit that kills ; 
Give us light and the fetters fall from us, 
For the strong soul is free when it wills." 

Did these lines have reference to the subject 
which I am now discussing ? 

In vain, in vain! all, all in vain ! Again, as at 
Dundalk, the champions of Irish liberty "fought 
under the curse of the Church." 

The Catholic clergy set themselves invincbily 
against the movement. 

Quoting again from Sullivan, who was an 

* EVa Mary Kelly, afterwards Mrs. Kevin O'Dougherty. 

t Ellen Downing. She died of grief, on being discarded by Joe Brennan, 
her patriot lover. 

X Jane Frances Eglee, daughter of a Protestant minister; now Lady 
"Wilde and mother of Oscar Wilde. 



HOSTILITY OF THE CLERGY. 59 

active participant, and, at the same time, an 
earnest Catholic, and even an extreme Ultramon- 
tane (being one of the chief organizers of the "Irish 
Brigade " for the Pope's army in i860),* we find : 
"At this time, in 1848, the power of the Catholic 
priests was unbroken — was stronger than ever. 
The famine scenes, in which their love for the 
people was attested by heroism and self sacrifice 
such as the world had never seen surpassed, had 
given them an influence which none could ques- 
tion or withstand. Their antagonism was fatal to 
the movement — more surely and infallibly fatal to 
it than all the power of the British Crown, "f 

The famine-years undoubtedly called forth the 
noblest traits of all true characters. All honor to 
the Catholic priests for having done their priestly 
duty so nobly in that awful period, but it should 
be remembered that many of their Protestant 
brethren of the cloth were also self-sacrificing. 
Of this the following instance, given by Mr, 
Sullivan, is a striking example: 

" The Protestant curate of my native parish, in 
1847, was the Rev, Alexander Ben Hallowell, 

* New Ireland, pp. 277 to 286. 

t New Ireland, p. 1 19; John Mitchell says: "About the year 1850 
Ireland became thoroughly subjugated, without almost a hope of escape. 
Everything was fitted to the hand of her enemy, and that enemy made most 
unrelenting use of the advantage. The CathoUc bishops counselled obedi- 
ence and submission." Hist. Ireland, Vol, II, p. 252. 



6o IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

subsequently rector of Clonakilty, and now I be- 
lieve residing somewhere in Lancashire. There 
were comparatively few of his own flock in a way 
to suffer from the famine, but he dared death 
daily in his efforts to save the perishing creatures 
around him. A poor hunchback, named Richard 
O'Brien, lay dying of the plague in a deserted 
hovel at a place called ' The Custom Gap.' Mr. 
Hallowell passing by heard the moans and went 
in. A shocking- sight met his view. On some 
rotten straw, in a dark corner, lay poor ' Dick ' 
naked, except a few rags across his body. Mr. 
Hallowell rushed to the door and saw a young 
friend on the road. ' Run, run with this shilling 
and buy me some wine,' he cried. Then he re- 
entered the hovel, stripped off his own clothes, 
and with his own hands put upon the plague- 
stricken hunchback the flannel vest and drawers 
and shirt of which he had just divested himself. 
/ know this to be true. I was the ' young friend * 
who went for and brought the wine.^'* 

Noble priests ! noble ministers ! Surely none 
of such men will be cast out of Heaven for mak- 
ing a mistake in the selection of his creed ! 

But why did this devoted Irish Catholic priest- 
hood destroy the "Young Ireland" movement } 

* New Ireland, p. 91. 



THE ALLEGED REASON. 6l 

It is said in their defense that "they regarded the 
Young Irelanders with suspicion." That: "They 
fancied they saw in this movement too much that 
was akin to the work of the continental revolu- 
tionists, and, greatly as they disliked the domina- 
tion of England, they would prefer it a thousand 
times to such 'liberty' as the carbonari would pro- 
claim."* 

If I could believe that the Irish Catholic clergy 
acted in good faith on their own judgment, even 
on this ridiculously mistaken opinion of the 
"Young Irelanders," I would not feel privileged 
to say one word in denunciation of their conduct; 
for, as Irishmen, each had an unquestionable 
right, according to his honest judgment, to favor 
or oppose any movement affecting the political 
liberty of his country. 

But I cannot believe that they opposed the 
movement for any such reason nor upon their in- 
dependent judgment. 

They knew that the movement was led by great 
and gifted statesmen, who fully realized their re- 
sponsibility, and who, in public and in private, f 
opposed the methods of the carbonari and of the 
continental revolutionists. They knew also that 

* New Ireland, p. 119. 

t See letter of Gavan Duflfy to Wm. Smith O'Brien, from Newgate 
Prison. New Ireland, p. 117. 



62 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

neither the French Revolution then in progress, 
nor even the "carnival of fire and blood" which 
reigned in France at the close of the last century, 
could add one terror to the sufferings which the 
Irish people had endured and were enduring. 

The artificial famine produced by English mis- 
government and landlord avarice was still upon 
them, and held them in its torturing grasp. 

On the combination rack of landlord-bred 
famine and famine-bred fever, the Irish people, in 
tens of thousands, were dying in agony, homeless 
and shelterless, in sight of the cabins which their 
own hands or the hands of their ancestors had 
built, but from which inhuman landlordism had 
evicted them, in their hour of direst affliction. 
They were hungering to death in sight of grana- 
ries filled with fruits which the God-given soil of 
Ireland had yielded to the inspiration of their 
own toil, but which, under the malign power of 
English laws, they had been compelled to sur- 
render to idle landlords. 

These landlords had, and have, no purpose in 
living, save that of collecting toll from their in- 
dustrious fellow-men; giving absolutely nothing in 
return except a superfluous assent to their victims' 
God-given privilege of using the natural resources 
of their native land. 



THE FAMINE ARTIFICIAL. 63 

Justin McCarthy, an eye witness, speaking of 
this period (1847 to 1857), says: "Evictions 
took place by the hundred, by the thousand, by 
the ten thousand — evictions as much for grazier's 
purposes as for non-payment of rent, which in 
those evil days of famine and failure they could 
not pay. Winter or summer, day or night, fair or 
foul weather, the tenants were ejected. Sick or 
well, bed-ridden or dying, the tenants— -men, women 
or children — were turned out. They might go to 
America if they could ; they might die on the 
roadside, if so it pleased them. They were out 
of the hut, and the hut was unroofed that they 
might not seek its shelter again, and that was all 
the landlord cared about. ""* 

These evictors and their allies, bear in mind, 
are the hell-hounds whom the Holy Father (?) is 
now so eager to shield from peaceful ostracism 
and legal embarrassments at the hands of their 
victims. 

There was not even a scarcity of food in Ire- 
land during the years of famine, but only a failure 
of the immediate crops on which the plundered 
tenantry depended. f 

* Ireland since the Union, p. 141. 

t "The harvest of 1847 was also very abundant in Ireland, and it was 
one of the deadliest years of famine. The English offered thanksgivings to 
God for the Irish harvests, and then devoured them," Mitchell's Hist., Vol. 
II, p. 252. 



64 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

Mrs. Nicholson, another eye witness, in her 
soul-harrowing work, "Lights and Shades of Ire- 
land," says : " What shall be said of the pitiful 
landlords, who were still drinking their wine, 
while pouring their doleful complaints into gov- 
ernment's ears, that no rents were paid. * * * * 
But these afflicted landlords were exporting to 
the continent vast quantities of grain, which their 
poor starving tenants had labored to produce. 
They were not allowed to eat a morsel of their 
food, but must buy it from others or starve."* 

And again. "Next to the absurdity of Cork 
and Limerick exporting cargoes of Irish grain for 
sale, and at the same time receiving cargoes of 
American grain to be given away at the cost of 
the English people, may be ranked the folly, if it 
may not properly be called by some worse name, 
of seeing hundreds dying for want of food, at the 
same time permitting* the conversion of as much 
grain as would feed the whole of those dying of 
starvation, and many more, into a fiery liquid 
which * * * ^ never saved a single life or im- 
proved a single character. "f 

Was this abject poverty of the Irish tenantry 
due to idleness or improvidence ? No. In years 



* pp. 30-1. 

t Lights and Shades, p. 130. 



IRISH SELF-SACRIFICE. 65 

of plenty as well as in years of scarcity the tenant 
is robbed of all the fruits of his labor, except that 
in good years he is left a slave's portion, enough 
to keep body and soul together. 

Industry, providence and self-sacrifice are and 
were the general characteristics of the Irish peas- 
antry. One illustration, among thousands that I 
might cite, must here suffice. It is also from the 
pen of Mrs. Nicholson. She had been riding on 
a car on which a tattered and repulsive looking 
man was also seated. On alighting from the car 
this man fell prostrate in the passage. She found 
that his weakness "was exhaustion, occasioned by 
hunger," and thus proceeds: "When he could 
speak in a whisper, he begged Mrs. Arthur to 
take a few sovereigns which he had sewed in his 
ragged coat, and send them to his wife and chil- 
dren, who were suffering for food. He had been 
at work in England, and, knowing the dreadful 
state his family were in at home, had saved a few 
sovereigns, not wiUinof to break one, and endea- 
vored to reach home on a few shillings he had, and 
being so weak for want of food he occasionally 
rode a few miles when it rained and had not eaten 
once in two days. "* 

It is to be hoped that the poor wife and children 



* Lights and Shades, p. i £9. 



66 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

obtained the money without the knowledge of the 
landlorcrs factor, as, otherwise, it must surely have 
gone to buy wine for the landlord instead of food 
for them. 

This spirit of self-sacrifice was not confined to 
mothers and fathers : " It is expected that mothers 
will suffer and even die for their famishing little 
ones, if needful ; but to see children suffer for one 
another, was magnanimity above all. Two house- 
less, starving little orphan boys," says Mrs. Nich- 
olson, "one about nine and the other five, called 
at the door of a rich widow of my acquaintance 
and asked for food. The woman had consumed 
all her bread at breakfast but a small piece, and 
giving this to the eldest she said : You must 
divide this with your little brother. I have no 
more." She then tells us that the lady "looked 
after them unperceived" and saw the elder boy 
give the whole piece to the other, and turn away 
to stifle the pangs of his own hunger while his 
weaker companion devoured it.* 

And these, bear in mind incidentally, are the 
people from whom the present Pope, by the spir- 
itual terror and coercion of his rescript, seeks to 
take away the only effective peaceful weapons of 
self-defense that they have ever had against the 

* Lights and Shades, p. 120. 



Ireland's condition. 67 

murderous and thrice damnable institution of land- 
lordism. 

Everywhere throughout the Island these scenes 
appeared^ shocking the sight, freezing the souls 
and haunting the memories of beholders, and all 
produced directly by the two institutions against 
which the gallant Young Irelanders were contend- 
ing. 

With the white lips, the glassy eyes and the 
bony fingers of gaunt visaged famine thus every- 
where pleading for succor or death, what had Ire- 
land to fear from "the methods of the continental 
revolutionists?" Absolutely nothing. 

Why then did the priesthood oppose the only 
movement that had for its object the removal of 
the causes, or any of the causes, of this artificial 
famine and this systematic plunder of the indus- 
trious by the idle ? 

My answer is, that they must have been acting 
under orders from the Pope and the bishops. 

John Mitchell says : " The Catholic bishops 
counseled obedience and submission" to the English 
Government,* and we know that the bishops, besides 
being appointed for their " unimpeachable loyalty," 
are directed largely by secret orders from the Vat- 
ican, which they are sworn to keep secret even 



* Mitchell's Hist., Vol. II, p. 252. 



68 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

from the priests of their jurisdictions. In such 
cases the orders of the Pope are issued to the 
priests and people as if they originated with the 
bishops. 

Assuming that, if the Pope did directly bring 
his authority to bear on the Irish bishops,* and 
through them on the priests and people to de- 
stroy the Young Ireland movement, his action 
must have been induced by some consideration 
moving from the English Government, I immedi- 
ately looked for acts of Parliament relating to the 
church and the Vatican. 

Strangely enough, I find that in the year 1848 
— the pivotal year of the Young Ireland struggle 
— a political privilege which had previously been 
denied for over three hundred years, was accorded 
to the Pope by an act of Parliament. f 

By this act the Government was authorized to 
re-open diplomatic relations with the Pope and to 
receive, in regal state, a papal ambassador at the 
Court of St. James. 

To those not familiar with the history of the 
Vatican, since it has fallen under the absolute do- 
minion of what has been most aptly called "the 
Italian Ring," this may seem a small price to en- 

* Parnell's Movement, p. 15. 

+ Stats. II and 12, Vict. (1848), Chap. 108, p. 686. 



THE VATICAN AGAIN. 69 

gage the head of the Catholic Church in assisting 
to perpetuate the bondage of six millions of faith- 
ful Catholics,* but to those who have read and 
watched the political history and movements of 
that ring, the sufficiency of the consideration will 
be quite apparent. 

Those who have observed the painful eager- 
ness with which the cardinals and popes — " the 
princes" t and "supreme rulers of the world" J— 
have bent " the pregnant hinges of their knees," 
and extended their hands, for small political favors, 
from the temporal rulers of European nations, will 
realize the tremendous importance attached by 
the Vatican to this recognition at the English 
Court. II 

This act constitutes the missing link and com- 
pletes the chain of causation. It makes plain the 
fact, and the reason, that the Vatican required the 
Irish priesthood to oppose the Young Ireland 
movement. The English Government had pur- 
chased its support and the quid pro quo must be 
given. 

* The sad remnant of the eight millions of two years before; Hist, of Our 
Own Times, Vol. I, p. 324. 

t "The rank of Cardinal, in its temporal aspect, is equivalent to that of 
a reigning prince. On their seals they have their own arms, with the red 
hat as crest." Catholic Dictionary, Tit. "Cardinal," p. 120. 
X Catholic Dictionary, Tit. "Tiara," p. 796. 

II For the enlightenment of those to whom this knowledge may not be 
common, I have inserted a chapter on Vatican politics. 



yo IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

What did it matter that Ireland was on the rack 
of a law-imposed famine ?* What did it matter 
that two millions of her people were dyingf for 
want of the bread which they had produced from 
mother earth, but of which they had been robbed 
by landlordism — the cruel creature of English 
law ? What did it matter that extermination by 
famine was the declared purpose of the govern- 
ment press,|; and of government representatives, || 
with respect to the Irish question ? As a com- 
pensation for all this, it was surely sufficient 
that the church (which meant, and still means, the 
Italian Ring in the chnrcJt) had made a great ad- 
vance. The political ambition of three centuries 
had been attained ! Glory hallelujah ! the Pope's 
legate was again permitted to strut in the Court of 
St. James ! 

Joy reigned in Rome ! Gloom spread over the 
camp of the Irish patriots ! 

" Their tents were all silent, their banners alone^ 
Their lances unHfted, their trumpets unblown." 

* Irish famines are not natural famines, they are artificial famines ; 
they are not made by the Lord, but by the landlord ; they are not famines 
of food — there is always plenty of that in Ireland — but famines of money 
with which to buy^food from landlords, who have taken the fruits of the soil 
as rent for land, to which they have generally no moral title." Ireland of 
To-day, p. 184. 

i" Hist, of Our Own Times, Vol. I., p. 324. 

X "In a few years," said the London Times, exultingly, "a Celtic Irish- 
man will be as rare in Connemara as is the red Indian on the slopes of the 
Manhattan." Ireland Since the Union, p. 144. 

II Ireland of To-day, pp. 46 and 191. 



THE CHURCH AGAINST THE FENIANS. 7I 

Ri^ht or wrong, for good or evil, another " Irish 
movement" lay dead at the feet of the triumphant 
Vatican ! 

The principal leaders of the movement were 
sentenced to be "hanged, disemboweled and quar- 
tered," but this barbarous sentence was commuted 
by Act of Parliament to transportation for life.* 
Of the others, numbers were convicted and hun- 
dreds fled to exile, and Ireland suffered not only 
the sacrifice of many of "her best and noblest 
sons," but also " in the terrible re-action, prostra- 
tion, terrorism and disorganization that ensued, "f 



CHAPTER X. 

THE FENIAN MOVEMENT OPPOSED BY THE CHURCH. 

Passing over the Tenant League agitation, the 
next serious effort for the liberation of Ireland 
was the Fenian movement, organized by a few 
daring spirits in May, 1858. 

The purpose was to organize and drill an Irish 
army; to have them supplied with munitions of 
war by similar organizations of Irishmen in Amer- 
ica ; to rise at a given signal ; storm the English 
strongholds and proclaim Ireland free. J It was 



* New Ireland, p. 125. 
+ New Ireland, p. 125. 
t New Ireland, p. 264, et. seq. 



72 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

too loosely oro^anized, for a movement so serious, 
and was in many respects impracticable and reck- 
less, but it was full of genuine patriotism, and love 
of a country whose condition was so wretched and 
desperate that it could not be seriously injured by 
their adventure. 

Bishop Moriarty, of Kerry, within an hour after 
learning of the movement,* commenced a bitter 
warfare against it. The Catholic clergy were soon 
denouncing it throughout Ireland as a "secret 
society" unauthorized by the church. 

Over this issue '' the Fenian movement, on its 
very threshold, was plunged into a bitter war with 
the ecclesiastical authorities of the Catholic 
Church. 'The priest has no right to interfere in or 
dictate our politics,' said the Fenian leaders ; 'ours 
is a political movement ; they must not question 
us or impede us.' 'You cannot be admitted to 
the sacrament until you give up and repent of illi- 
cit oaths,' responded the Catholic priests, ' and if 
you contumaciously continue in membership of an 
oath-bound secret society, you are liable to excom- 
munication.'" 

*' Do you hear this ? We are cursed by the 
church for loving our country!" exclaimed the 
Fenians;" and thus the quarrel continued for five 



* New Ireland, p, 264. 



MORIARTY S REGRET. 73 

years.* The movement grew, and attained con- 
siderable proportions, but in face of such opposi- 
tion it could not accomplish much. 

In 1867 three of its promoters — Allen, O'Brien 
and Larkin — were hanged. These men died 
with the prayer: "God Save Ireland," on their 
lips; while their gentle Christian antagonist, Bish- 
op Moriarty, of " unimpeachable loyalty "f re- 
gretted that "hell was not hot enough nor eter- 
nity long enough to punish such miscreants. "|; 



CHAPTER XI. 

HOME RULE MOVEMENT OPPOSED BY THE CHURCH. 

On the 19th day of May, 1870, the present 
Home Rule Movement was instituted. It was a 
purely peaceable movement to secure, by constitu- 
tional agitation, "the establishment of an Irish 
parliament, with full control over domestic af- 
fairs."|| At this meeting were " men who never 
before met in politics save as irreconcilable foes. 
The Orangeman and the Ultramontane, the 
staunch Conservative and the sturdy Liberal, the 
National Repealer and the Imperial Unionist, the 

* New Ireland, p. 312. 
t See page 28. 
i Pamell movement, p. 227. 
II New Ireland, p. 450. 



74 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

Fenian Sympathizer and the devoted loyalist, sat 
in free and friendly counsel."* 

Even at this heterogeneous meeting the resolu- 
tion in favor of Home Rule was adopted unani- 
mously. 

But the Catholic Bishop of Derry was more 
loyal to English rule than all of these, so he op- 
posed the movement, and in January, 1871, he 
publicly denounced it. 

Like Cardinal Cullen he " was always on the 
side of the Government as against all struggles of 
Nationalists, on the principle that England could 
do more for the interests of the church than any 
National Party, "f 

The British Government was at that time hold- 
ing out a proposition to establish a Catholic Uni- 
versity in Ireland, for the purpose of drawing the 
Catholic clergy away from the popular move- 
ment, and it had "a powerful effect with some of 
the Catholic bishops and clergy. "J Early in 1872 the 
Home Rulers noticed that important newspapers 
under the control and influence of the Catholic 
clergy "began to draw off from the movement 
and to say that the demand for Home Rule was, 



* New Ireland, p. 444. 

t Parnell Movement, p. 140. 

i New Ireland, p. 456. 



THE CLERICAL PARTY. 75 

no doubt, very right and just, but it was inoppor- 
tune ^^ 

Did the finger of Rome direct this change of 
heart on the part of the Irish clergy ? I cannot 
prove it by direct evidence, but viewing and judg- 
ing the circumstances in the light of experiences 
prior and subsequent to that time, I may fairly 
say that it so appears to a moral certainty and 
beyond all reasonable doubt. 

The movement grew and prospered, but the 
opposition of the clergy continued. On the 6th 
of August, 1875, 3-t a banquet given in honor of 
the centenary of the birth of Daniel O'Connell, a 
number of Catholic clergymen, native and foreign, 
were present, and an unseemly discussion arose 
between the clergymen and the Home Rulers on 
the question of Home Rule, which resulted in much 
dissension, and, immediately afterwards, Mr. 
McSwiney, Lord Mayor of Dublin, organized, or 
tried to organize, a sort of clerical counter move- 
ment to draw away the strength of the Home 
Rule Party, calling it the "Faith and Fatherland 
Party." 

On the 15th of August, 1879, the price of this 
clerical opposition to the Home Rule movement 
was duly paid by Parliament, by the abolition of 

* New Ireland, p. 456. ^ 



76 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

the Queen's University in Ireland and the estab. 
lishment in its stead of a new University for Ro- 
man Catholics. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE LAND LEAGUE OPPOSED BY THE POPE. 

In September, 1879, the Irish National Land 
League was formed, not to replace, but to supple- 
ment, the Home Rule movement. 

Another artificial famine was approaching, and 
the real purpose of the League was to intercept 
landlord extortion and to check evictions ; thus 
preventing the re-enactment of the horrible fam- 
ine scenes of 1847-8. 

The lives of many thousands of Irish families 
were saved, and this immediate success in giving 
shelter and protection to the masses of the people 
from the one ever dreaded enemy — landlordism — < 
rallied the people in hundreds of thousands to the 
standard of Parnell and Davitt. 

In the midst of this struggle to keep the un- 
fortunate tenantry under the shelter of their own 
cabins during the famine ; while subscriptions to 
the famine fund, for the relief of the starving 
Irish, were slowly arriving from the generous 
hearted of Canada, Australia, the United States, 



ALL FOR A CARDINAL S HAT. 'J'J 

and even from far-off India; and while factors 
and bailiffs and soldiers and constables and crow- 
bar brigades were evicting the unfortunates and 
leveling their huts, and as far and fast as the pas- 
sive resistance of the unarmed people would per- 
mit, re-enacting the horrors of 1847-8 — even in 
this awful crisis — the Roman Catholic Archbishop 
of Dublin (McCabe), in full cry with the blood- 
hounds of landlordism, had a pastoral letter pub- 
lished in the churches of his arch-diocese condemn- 
ing the Land League agitation. 

On the loth of October, 1880, and again on the 
30th of October, 1881, the same Archbishop re- 
newed his thunders against those who by passive 
resistance defended the lives and homes of the 
people, in new, and truly "loyal," pastoral letters. 
In March, 1881, a Ladies' Land League was 
formed for the most humane and Christian purpose 
of "raising funds, inquiring into cases of eviction, 
and affording relief to evicted tenants. As soon 
as this new organization came into existence it 
was assailed" by this red-cap-hunting hound of the 
Vatican — Archbishop McCabe — "as at once im- 
modest and wicked."* As a reward for these ser- 
vices, and as an acknowledgment that he was 
sufficiently anti-Irish and cold-blooded to associate 



* Ireland since the Union, p. 274. 



78 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

in close relationship with the Italian Ring, he was 
created a cardinal* on the 27th of March, 1882. 

I have spoken specially of the conduct of Arch- 
bishop McCabe because his elevation to the posi- 
tion of a "prince of the church" is pretty conclu- 
sive evidence that he, at least, in all that he did, 
was acting under the direct orders of the Vatican. 

A strong circumstance tending to confirm this 
view is, that the Vatican, while still pretending to 
be neutral in the affairs of Ireland, was secretly 
interfering with the raising of funds in America, 
even to relieve the famine sufferers whose support 
had been undertaken by the Leagues. 

In 1882, Rev. Edward McGlynn, the most elo- 
quent and popular Catholic priest in the world, 
was delivering lectures in New York for the bene- 
fit of the Leagues. Archbishop McCloskey re- 
ceived peremptory orders from the Vatican re- 
quiring him to compel Dr. McGlynn to desist, on 
pain of suspension from his priestly office. 

The Dr., bowing to authority, discontinued his 
lectures. 

In 1883, Dr. McGlynn was requested to deliver 
a special lecture for the benefit of the then starv- 
ing people of Western Ireland. A telegram was 
immediately sent to Archbishop McCloskey from 

* He was the second Irish cardinal ever appointed ; Cullen, another anti- 
Irish Irishman, being the first. 



DAVITT SPURNED AT ROME. 79 

the Vatican, signed by Cardinal Simeoni, or- 
dering him to "suspend this priest McGlynn, for 
preaching in favor of the Irish revolution." 

These documents came to light in December^ 
1886, in consequence of the trouble between Dr. 
McGlynn and Archbishop Corrigan at that time. 
Otherwise the circumstances would never have 
been made public. How many hundred similar 
blows may have been dealt against the Irish cause 
in secret and in darkness by these Italian allies 
of England may never be known. 

Another circumstance pregnant of meaning is, 
that, about the time of which I am speaking, it 
was reported that Sir George Errington, a "Castle 
Cawtholic," and emissary of England, was com- 
missioned for some secret intrigue at the Vatican. 

Michael Davittwent to Rome, as the accredited 
representative of the Irish people, to lay their 
cause before the Pope. 

He was spurned and boycotted, as if he was a 
leper, by the " distinguished Catholics " then 
visiting at Rome — even the guests at the hotel 
where he stopped left the dining-room in which he 
was seated, and threatened to leave the hotel 
unless he was required to leave. He was refused* 
an audience with the Pope, on the ground that his 



8o IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

reception might give the impression that the Holy- 
Father was taking sides on the Irish question. 

A few weeks afterwards, the Prince of Wales, 
apparently for no other purpose than to expose 
the double face of the Vatican, had a suggestion 
conveyed to the Holy Office that he thought of 
paying a visit to Rome, and inquiring if he might 
expect to be accorded an audience by His Holi- 
ness. 

Immediately, without any fear of misconstruc- 
tion, the arms of the Holy Father were opened 
and extended to receive the representative of the 
English side of the Irish question. He did not 
go, but sent his "Castle Cawtholic" flunky. Erring- 
ton, who was accorded more than one audience* 
and on his ex parte representations secured at 
least one important favor of which I shall presently 
speak. 

On the 20th of January, 1883, Pope Leo XIII. 
sent a rescript to the Irish clergy commanding 
them to use their power to suppress certain classes 
of societies, the description being broad enough to 
include the Irish political leagues. 

The effect of this rescript was not to destroy, as 
designed, but to divide and weaken the movement; 
but it certainly was not the Pope's fault if anything 

* No representative of landlordism was ever denied an audience by tke 
Pope. 



ERRINGTON S BLUNDER. 01 

remained of the Irish movement after his poisoned 
draught had been administered. 

Not satisfied with this the Pope, on the nth of 
May of the same year, issued a more powerful and 
mandatory rescript, condemning and forbidding 
disaffection to the government, and forbidding 
subscriptions to the Parnell testimonial fund, a 
fund then being raised by Irishmen and their 
sympathizers to reimburse Mr. Parnell for losses 
suffered by him through the agitation. This was 
the papal favor secretly granted at the secret re- 
quest of Errington, made under circumstances 
which I have already detailed. 

Again, upon the death of Cardinal McCabe in 
February, 1885, this same Errington, still "acting 
as the gutter-agent of the English Government," 
secretly secured from the Pope a rescript or order 
commanding the bishops of Ireland to observe the 
wishes of England in nominating a successor to 
the vacant archbishopric. 

Before this rescript had reached Ireland, Er- 
rington, either in the intoxication of joy produced 
by the success of his mission, or under the influ- 
ence of anotner kind of intoxication, quite common 
to his class of reveling Christians, boasted of the 
promise which he had secured from the Pope. 

This news, telegraphed to Ireland before the 



82 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

rescript had been received, called forth such a 
storm of indignation that the Pope, in fear of los- 
ing his Irish "Peter's Pence," recalled it. 

In April, 1885, Bishop Nulty of Meath, a brave 
and noble patriot prelate, and others of his stripe, 
having publicly favored the Land League and 
Home Rule movements, were summoned to Rome 
and rebuked by the Pope for their disloyalty. 

On the 9th of May following, Bishop Nulty 
published a pastoral letter warning the Vatican 
that if it persisted in its unjust and oppressive 
course toward the Irish people they too would 
some day manifest the spirit displayed by other 
nationalities and break away from the spiritual, as 
well as the temporal dominion of Rome. This 
pastoral is said to have "caused great displeas- 
ured It did in fact cause great consternation, 
and produced the remarkable effect of keeping the 
Pope's hand away from the throat of Irish lib- 
erty for three full years. 



IRELAND AND THE POPE. S^ 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE LAST RESCRIPT. 

On the 20th of April, 1888, the Pope, at the 
secret and ex parte request of the Duke of Nor- 
folk, issued another resc^dpt* condemning and for- 
bidding the use of two of the weapons of self- 
defense invented and successfully used by the suf- 
fering people in their terrible and unequal strug- 
gle against the life-destroying oppression of land- 
lordism, namely : the plan of campaign and the 
boycott. 

This condemnation is put upon the grounds: {a) 
that the plan of campaign is " unjust and inequita- 
ble to the landlords; and [b) that the boycott is "« 
new form of persecution and proscription, al- 
together foreign to natural justice and to Chris- 
tian charity." 

Leaving out of account for the present the un- 
denied and undeniable fact that the Irish land- 
lords, under the protection of English laws, and 
English or pro-English judges, constables, bailiffs 
and soldiers, have been able, not only to hold their 
own, but to rob the whole Irish people of all the 
produce of their labor above that bare subsistence 



* See Appendix C. 



84 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

which is the portion of chattel slaves — denying 
even that to millions, whom they have willfully 
condemned to death by the slow tortures of 
famine — and to drive (as they still do) a million 
a decade into exile, let us consider what the 
plan of campaign and boycott are and compare 
them with the methods of persecution, plunder, 
and extermination which they were designed to 
resist. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

PLAN OF CAMPAIGN AND BOYCOTT VS. RACK RENT, 
EVICTION, AND RULES OF ESTATE. 

The land question is at the very root, and is the 
root, of all the Irish troubles. The Irish people 
must live on the land, and from the land of Ire- 
land, if they are permitted to live at all. There 
are now about five millions of people living on the 
Island, and the entire land on which and from 
which they must live is the exclusive private prop- 
erty of about seventeen thousand landlords, * 
great and small, who have the almost absolute 
power to determine upon what conditions and for 
what tribute the other millions shall be permitted 
to live. Having this power, the landlords, for 

* Mullhall's Dictionary of Statistics, p. 266. 



RACK-RENTING. 85 

centuries, kept the people in a constant nightmare, 
and turned the country into a vast panorama of 
horrors. 

They fixed rents according to the measure of 
their own merciless avarice, often making it higher 
than the gross yield of the land, and, in the lan- 
guage of Dean Swift. '' squeezed it out of the very 
blood and vitals and clothes and dwellings of the 
tenants, tvho live zuorse than English beggars^' 
Whatever of the rent could not be extorted by the 
terrors of threatened eviction was generously al- 
lowed to accumulate in "arrearages," to pay 
which unusually good crops, and contributions of 
American relatives, were confiscated. 

This is what, in Irelend, is called "rack-rent- 
ing." It may be denominated the " rack " of 
landlordism, but it is not without its flesh-rending 
" spiked roller "(to use terms certainly familiar to 
the Holy Office of the Inquisition) nor its "fire 
wheel" and "torturing stake." 

The tenant in arrears was always subjected to 
summary eviction, and even if his rent were not 
in arrears he was subject, on short notice, to be 
similarly evicted, in order that the owner might 
consolidate farms, or turn the land into a park, or 
sheep pasture, or in order to gratify any whim, re- 



86 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

venge, or other desire, on the part of the land- 
lord. 

"Our Irish landlords," says Father Lavelle, 
"all Christians, many of 7ny ozvn creed^ act the 
landlord as if there were no God ; oppressing the 
poor man and the weak of heart to put him to 

death. "t 

A parliamentary committee appointed to in- 
quire into the condition of Irish tenantry — evicted 
in order to promote the consolidation of farms, 
not for non-payment of rent — reported that : "It 
would be impossible for language to convey an 
idea of the distress to which they have been re- 
duced. * * ^^ They are obliged to resort to 
theft and all manner of vice and miquity to pro- 
cure subsistence, and a vast number of them per- 
ish of want, after having undergone misery and 
suffering such as no language can describe and of 
which no conception can be formed without act- 
ually beholding it. "J 

But the scope of this book will not permit the 
presentation of many examples of the murderous 
persecution by which landlordism has turned the 
heaven-favored land of Erin into the dark and 

* Has the Pope ever excommunicated, or threatened to excommunicate, 
any of these landlords for persecuting their fellow Catholics ? Not one. 
+ The Irish Landlord, p. 196. 
% The Irish Landlord, p. 248. 



RULES OF THE ESTATE. 87 

bloody arena which It has certainly been. I have 
before me Father Lavelle's great and fascinating 
work on "The Irish Landlord," containing five 
hundred and forty pages filled with terrible but 
well attested examples of landlord atrocity, but 
those which I have, here and elsewhere in this 
volume given, are quite sufficient to show how 
unnatural is the power, and how terrible is the 
threat, of eviction. They show the sort of knife 
which the seventeen thousand landlords, in good 
and bad seasons, hold, by legal process, to the 
throats of their five million Irish tenant slaves,* to 
enforce their extortionate demands. 

Well has Mr. Gladstone called the writ of 
eviction a ''death warrant?" 

But the landlord's persecution does not end 
with eviction. After eviction the unfortunate 
tenant must face the terrible "Rules of .the 
Estate." 

These rules forbid any tenant in the district 
giving food or shelter to any member of an evic- 
ted family, on pain of being in like manner evicted 
by his or her landlord. But this is not all, the 
landlords of other districts have equally stringent 

* Pope Leo complimented the Emperor of Brazil on having freed his 
slaves, in the very week during which he ordered the Irish back into their 
chains. 



65 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

rules against sheltering or harboring the doomed 
wretches. 

Another example from Father Lavelle will illus- 
trate the working of these rules. Speaking of a 
very ordinary eviction he says: " A certain land- 
lord in County Galway got a cheap decree at 
quarter sessions against a tenant on his property. 
This was early in October ; October and Novem- 
ber passed over and a gleam of hope began to 
enter the poor man's soul that, at least, he would 
be permitted to pass the Christmas holidays in his 
old home. December was fast running out; the 
sun of Christmas eve had actually risen, and with 
it the poor man and his wife and family, when 
horror of horrors ! what does he see approaching 
his cabin door, followed by a -posse comitatus of 
the Crow-bar Brigade, but the Sheriff, surrounded 
by. a detachment of the constabulary force. The 
family were flung out like vermin, and the work 
of demolition occupied but a few minutes. The 
evicted family passed that and the subsequent 
Christmas night with no other covering but that 
of the wide canopy of Heaven, as strict prohibi- 
tions had been issued to all the other tenants to 
harbor them on pain of similar treatment.""* 

Bishop Nulty of Meath, one of God's true 

* The Irish Landlord, pp. 271-2. 



EVICTION HORRORS. 89 

noblemen, speaking of "a truel and inhuman 
eviction" witnessed by himself, and in which 
'' seven hundred human beings were driven from 
their homes in one day and set adrift on the 
world," although "there was not a single shilling 
of rent due on the estate at the time except by 
one man." After describing the horrors of the 
eviction itself, he proceeds : "The horrid scenes 
I then witnessed I must remember all my life 
long. The wailing of women — the screams, the 
terror, the consternation of children — the speech- 
less agony of honest industrious men — wrung 
tears of grief from all who saw them. # * ^ 
The heavy rains that usually attend the autumnal 
equinoxes descended in cold, copious torrents 
throughout the night, and at once revealed to the 
houseless sufferers the awful realities of their con- 
dition. I visited them next morning and rode 
from place to place administering to them all the 
comfort and consolation I could. The appearance 
of men, women and children, as they emerged 
from the ruins of their former homes — saturated 
with rain, blackened and besmeared with soot, 
shivering in every member from cold and mis- 
ery — presented positively the most appalling spec- 
tacle I ever looked at. The landed proprietors 
in a circle all around — and for many miles in 



90 IRELAND AND THE POPE, 

every direction — warned their tenantry, with 
threats of their direst vengeance against the hu- 
manity of extending to any of them the hospital- 
ity of a single night's shelter. Many of these 
poor people were unable to emigrate with their 
families, while at home the hand of every man 
was thus raised against them. Th»y were driven 
from the land on which Providence had placed 
them, and, in the state of society surrounding 
them, every other walk of life was rigidly closed 
against them. What was the result ? After bat- 
tling in vain with privation and pestilence, they at 
last graduated from the workhouse to the tomb, 
and in a little more than three years, nearly a 
fourth of them lay quietly in their graves."* 

This is landlordism, in all its cold and cruel 
infamy ! Standing between God's children and 
the means which he has provided freely for their 
support If Blasting their happiness and crushing 
out their lives. Down with it! Eternal Justice, 
let it, and its supporters, find : 

" No shelter from the withering curse 
Of God and human kind." 

But what of the plan of campaign and the 
boycott — the weapons of passive resistance 

* The Parnell Movement, p. 173. 

+ It is estimated that Ireland, if free from landlordism, is capable of sup- 
porting comfortably from three to four times its present population. 



PLAN OF CAMPAIGN. 9 1 

with which the tenants, "contrary to natural jus- 
tice and Christian charity" according to the Holy 
Father, seek to defend their lives and their fami- 
lies against this man-eating monster of landlord- 
ism ? 

The plan of campaign is a modification of the 
"No-Rent Manifesto" of October i8th, 1881, 
and is simply this : The tenants of a district de- 
termine to act together in withholding from their 
landlords enough of their crops, or of the price 
thereof, to provide food for their families and seed 
for their land for the approaching season, and to 
give the rest up to the landlord as toll for the 
privilege of using the God-given land. The ten- 
ants, or their representatives, agree upon the 
percentage of the fixed rents that can be paid by 
them, and then, all who desire to join in the plan, 
pay the amount of rent agreed upon to a secret 
agent (from whom it would be taken by legal pro- 
cess by the landlords if his identity were known), 
subject to future agreement between the landlord 
and tenants. If the landlord agrees to accept the 
rent thus deposited, it is paid over to him ; other- 
wise it is returned to the tenant. The tenants, 
thus acting under the plan, assist each other in the 
defense of eviction suits, and, in defiance of the 
" Rules of Estate," give each other shelter when 
evicted. 



92 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

But this would be ineffectual without some 
means of preventing their more unscrupulous 
fellow wretches from underbidding them and tak- 
ing their little holdings at the old rack-rent rates. 

Here the boycott comes into play, and it is 
simply this : Any person who rents the holding 
of an evicted tenant is socially, commercially, 
poHtically, and industrially ostracised by all of the 
other tenants (practically the whole population) in 
the district. 

They will not associate with him, nor speak to 
him, nor buy from him, nor sell to him, nor work 
for him, nor hire him. They will not handle his 
erain, nor work where it is handled. 

No member of any of the Leagues will work on 
any steamer which carries cattle raised by him 
to the English market. There is in it no invasion 
of legal right, and no aggression. 

" Nothing is done ^o the obnoxious individual, 
but nothing will be done y^r him."* 

This principle, as far as possible, is applied to 
obnoxious landlords as well as to underbidding 
tenants. 

Thus the boycott and the plan of campaign 
are the complement and supplement of each other, 

* Ireland Since the Union, p. 251. 



DISARMING THE VICTIMS. 93 

and together they constitute a tolerably effective 
moral weapon of self-defense. 

With the weapons which I have thus described 
the contest between landlordism and tenantry has 
of late years been fought. 

This is the contest in which Pope Leo has 
deemed it his duty to interfere seven times, at 
least, within the past six years, and always on the 
side of the strong against the weak. 

He now deems it his duty to disarm the un- 
fortunate tenantry of even these moral weapons, 
and leave them naked and helpless to the cruel 
fangs of their worse than tiger enemies. 

Vicar of Christ ! Well, — so be it. 

These condemned methods have saved thous- 
ands of the Irish people from starvation, and 
millions from hunger and privation, during the 
past six years. 

They have saved to the people about fifteen 
millions of dollars per annum, and have, by this 
immediate benefit, consolidated the whole people 
of Ireland in the mighty political struggle for 
Home Rule and Land Reform. 

The landlords, the Tories; and the Pope well 
know that, if this advantage could be taken 
away, the political movement would disin- 
tegrate with it ; and so, by an agreement 



94 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

confessedly made with the Duke of Norfolk, 
the Pope threatens the Irish tenants with the 
terrors of an eternity in hell, after death, unless 
they will consent to return again to the hell on 
earth from which the Land and National Leagues 
have partially relieved them. 

Before the condemned methods were adopted, 
from one million to five million dollars were an- 
nually sent to the people of Ireland by relatives 
and sympathizers in America, but the contribu- 
tions served only to increase the rapacity and ex- 
tortion of the landlords, by increasing the tenants' 
ability to pay — the only standard by which the 
maximum of Irish rents is measured. Any man, 
not an idiot, who speaks seriously of freedom of 
contract between landlords and tenants in Ireland, 
betrays a contemptible hypocrisy that not even 
the mask of the Gorgon would conceal. 

If, by any possibility, the Pope may have been 
ignorant of the true nature of the controversy in 
which he has been so persistently interfering, his 
ignorance is due to his constant refusal to hear 
the Irish side of it, and is not a whit less excusa- 
ble than malice prepense. 

The other hypocritical defense so often urged, 
that the Pope does not oppose the Irish political 
movement but only the methods by which it is sup- 



MOVEMENTS AND METHODS. 95 

ported, is puerile and childish. The methods 
constitute the force and measure of the move- 
ment. 

They alone make the political movement possi- 
ble by giving the people an immediate incentive 
to combined effort, and a breathing spell from the 
tortures of landlordism, during which they may 
work and think. 

Suppose that Germany were to commence an 
invasion of France (eldest daughter of the church) 
and that the Pope should forbid the French peo- 
ple to use either powder or improved implements 
of war in resisting the invasion, and should then, 
with customary hypocrisy, say to the French peo- 
ple: "My dear children, I would not for the world 
interfere with your ambition to preserve the politi- 
cal freedom of your country. 1 object only to 
your metJiodsy 

What would the French people say to this ? 

They would burn him in effigy, as they did his 
predecessor, Pius VI., in 1791, when he interfered, 
on behalf of the nobility, with their political as- 
pirations. 

The ultramontanes will hardly deny the anal- 
ogy between the present case of Ireland and the 
supposed case of France on the ground that 
France has a nationality to preserve while Ireland 



96 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

has not, since Ireland had a nationality for thirty 
centuries and would probably have had it to this 
time were it not for the treachery of Pope Leo's 
predecessor — Adrian. 

This Roman "explanation of the rescript" is 
so supremely ridiculous, that, if it had been given 
by a negro minstrel it would have produced roars 
of laughter and would have ranked as "a good 
hit." 



CHAPTER XV. 

POPE leg's boycott on dr. m'glynn. 

In the Pope's rescript we are favored with the 
information that boycotting is "a new form of per- 
secution and proscription." In truth, however, 
it is but a mild form of excommunication, suggest- 
ed by, and modeled after, the Roman Catholic 
practice of religious and civil ostracism, which, ac- 
cording to Catholic church authorities, has been 
practiced by the church ever since its organiza- 
tion; was recommended by Christ* himself and 
actually put in practice by St. Paul.f 

We find also, that Solon (594 B. C), recom- 
mended the " ostracism" by the people of persons 
v.'hose presence was considered dangerous to the 

* f,. It., XVIIL, 17. 

+ I C '., V. 3; Catholic Die, p. 327. 



THE RELIGIOUS BOYCOTT. 97 

peace and well being of Athens; but that boycott 
included the harsher element of " exclusion from 
the city." 

In cases of major excommunication, non toler- 

ati, pronounced by the pope or by any bishop of 

the Catholic church, "the faithful are forbidden to 

hold either religious or civil communication"* with 

-the excommunicated person. 

I certainly cannot give a better definition of 
boycotting than to say that it is an agreement be- 
tween two or more persons not "to hold either re- 
ligious or civil communication" with a third per- 
son. Yet that is the very definition which Cath- 
olic authorities give of the universal practice of 
the church, and certainly the Holy Office does not 
mean to condemn a regular and frequent practice 
of the Catholic church as ''contrary to Christian 
charity." 

The Pope himself has now a boycott in full 
force against Dr. Edward McGlynn of the city of 
New York; a boycott which is, in its terms, infin- 
itely more rigorous and terrible than any ever de- 
clared or enforced by any secular body in Ireland. 

The church boycott delivers the victim imme- 
diately, and for eternity, over to the devil ; f the 

* Catholic Die, p. 328. 
+ Catholic Die, p. 327. 



98 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

faithful are forbidden to hold either relieious or 
civil communication with him ; they cannot attend 
a meeting at which he is to deliver a" lecture with- 
out incurring the penalty of excommunication * 
by contagion ; and if a Catholic, however devout, 
even if he have received communion within a 
month, should suddenly die while attending a 
lecture delivered by an excommunicated person, 
he must be deprived of Christian burial, f 

The body of a devout Catholic is now lying in 
a public vault in New York City, and, because he 
died suddenly at one of Dr. McGlynn's lectures 
on social questions, is denied Christian burial by 
the archbishop. In other words, this dead man's 
body is denied Christian burial because, in his life- 
time, he did not take part in carrying out the 
Pope's boycott against Dr. McGlynn. A very 
common regard for the ordinary proprieties 
should have induced His Holiness to declare his 
own boycotts off before condemning the milder 
Irish boycotts as un-Christian. 

It is no answer to this " deadly parallel " to 
say that the Irish boycotts, although milder, are in 
fact more strictly observed than his. It is cer- 
tainly not his fault that anybody associates with or 

* So declared by Bishop McQuade of Rochester, N. Y. 
+ So declared by Archbishop Corrigan, N. Y. 



VATICAN POLITICS. 99 

Speaks to, or deals with, Dr. McGlynn, after he has 
given an order which requires them to avoid him. 

Again, what is the penalty for violating the 
Pope's rescript against the un-Christian practice 
of boycotting ? Why, the violators of the rescript 
will simply be boycotted by the Pope ! 

It is fortunate, as has been fully explained, that 
this document was not issued by the Pope ex 
cathedra^ but was issued on the fallible advice of 
the Holy Office of the Inquisition, over the delib- 
erations of which the Pope presides in person,* and 
it is therefore possible to recall it if it shall prove 
to be erroneous. 

If it effects its purpose without serious opposi- 
tion, there will be no further action taken about 
it ; so, also, if it be quietly ignored ; but if it be 
strenuously resisted it will be found to be errone- 
ous and withdrawn. 

At any rate that is the fixed reputation of the 
Vatican in the matter of issuing political bulls 
against the children of the church, and there is no 
reason to suspect a change of policy at this time. 

* Catholic Die, p. 447. 



lOO IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

VATICAN POLITICS THE ITALIAN RING. 

To get any clear idea of the motives and pur- 
poses of the Vatican in dealing with the Irish 
question it is absolutely necessary to have a gen- 
eral knowledge of the character (religious and po- 
litical) of the papal office, and of the personnel of 
its incumbents at various periods, and also a 
knowledge of the origin, character and personnel 
of the College of Cardinals. 

There is a vast difference between the Catholic 
religion, the Catholic church and the Catholic 
hierarchy. The first consists of principles and 
articles of faith; the second is the organization by 
and through which these principles and articles 
are taught and inculcated, and the third is the 
body of priestly officers charged with administer- 
ing the affairs of the church and promoting the 
religion. 

The religion is unchangeable, no matter how 
much the interpretation of its principles and arti- 
cles may vary. The organization, which includes 
discipline, ceremonies, etc., may be changed by 
the hierarchy as the ever changing conditions of 
the world may require. 



POPE AND CARDINALS. lOI 

The hierarchy Is constantly changing and is 
subject to all the defects that are incident to hu- 
man folly, ambition and vice. 

It is with this changeable human hierarchy, 
and with it alone, that I am dealing; and it is 
acknowledged, by all Catholic writers, to have 
been at various times, good and bad, weak and 
strong, covetous and generous, worldly and disin- 
terested. I shall therefore speak freely, feeling 
that none can be reasonably offended, in his re- 
ligious sensitiveness, by the statement of "truths, 
however painful,"* which do not concern the in- 
tegrity of his religious principles. 

The controlling power of the Catholic hierarchy 
consists of the Pope and a college of seventy 
Cardinals. t 

The Pope appoints the Cardinals and the Car- 
dinals elect the Pope. The whole church organ- 
ization is therefore under the absolute and exclu- 
sive control of a self-perpetuating body of seventy- 
one men. 

The tremendous power wielded by those sev- 
enty-one men, cannot be questioned by any per- 
son, or body of persons, in the church; and if their 
political as well as their religious edicts are obeyed 
by Catholics, it will at once be apparent that their 

* See Lives of the Popes, by J. C. Earle, p. 6. 
+ Catholic Die, p. 119. 



I02 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

support must be of incalculable value to political 
sovereigns, and that the temptation to corruption 
and worldly ambition is enormous. 

It will further appear, at once, that if the Col- 
lege of Cardinals should ever fall into the hands 
of a few designing families it would be impossible 
to prevent them from creating or perpetuating a 
most exclusive aristocracy, as powerful and irre- 
sponsible as any that ever held sway upon earth. 

These are the very things that have transpired 
in the See of Rome. 

The College of Cardinals for over eight hundred 
years (ever since it was created) * has been com- 
posed almost exclusively of Italians, and these 
have been nearly all members of a little Italian 
nobility consisting of a very few families. 

While the great teachers, preachers, bishops, 
and priests, representing more than nine-tenths of 
the Catholic world, have been practically excluded 
(being admitted only in a small and powerless 
minority), brothers, cousins, uncles, nephews, and 
even fathers and sons, of the little Italian nobility, 
have for generation after generation sat beside 
each other in the College of Cardinals. 

To illustrate this, a few examples, from stand- 
ard Catholic authorities, will suffice : 

* Catholic Die, p. ii8. 



ALL "NOBLEMEN. IO3 

The present Pope, John V. R. L. Pecci, is the 
son of Count Domenico, and has a brother in the 
College of Cardinals^; Pius IX., John M. M. 
Ferretti, was the son of Count Jerome Ferretti 
and Countess Catharine Solazzi^ ; Gregory XVI., 
Bartholemew Albert Cappellari, " was born at 
Belluno, in Lombardy, September i8th, 1795, of 
parents belonging to the nobles of the place^ ; " 
Pius VI 1 1., Francis X. Castiglioni, was "born 
(November 20th, 1761) of noble family'*" and 
appointed as his secretary Cardinal Albini, of the 
house of Albini, " one of the most illustrious and 
noble in Italy, boasting even of imperial allian- 
ces^ ; " Leo XII., Hannibal della Genga, "was 
the son of Count Hillary della Genga^ ; " and 
Pius VII., Barnabas Chiaramonti, who was a rel- 
ative of Pius VI,'' derived "high nobility" from 
his father.^ These constitute the last five Popes, 
and the statement which I have given illustrates 
how the papacy is confined, not merely to Ital 
ians, but to the old Italian political aristocracy. 
But that is not all ; four of the Popes — Leo X., 

1 M. F. Egan in "The Century," May, 1888. 

2 Shea's Life of Pius IX., p. 1 1. 

3 The Last Four Popes, by Cardinal Wiseman, p. 376. 

4 The Last Four Popes, p. 323. 

5 The Last Four Popes, p. 330. 

6 The Last Four Popes, p. 195. 

7 The Last Four Popes, p. 328-9. 

8 The Last Four Popes, p. 37. 



I04 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

Clement VII., Pius IV., and Leo XI. — were im- 
mediate members of the" Medici family^ ; three 
Popes — Innocent III., his nephew Gregory IX., 
and Innocent XIII. — were immediate members of 
the [Conti family^; two of the Popes — Sixtus 
IV. and his nephew Julius II. — were immediate 
members of the Rovere family^ ; two of the 
Popes — Nicholas III. and Benedict XIII. — were 
immediate members of the Orsini family^ ; two 
of the Popes — Calixtus III. and his nephew Alex- 
ander VI. — were immediate members of the Bor- 
gia family.^ 

Cardinal Caesar Borgia was a son of Pope Al- 
exander VI. ,^ and sat as a member of the College 
of Cardinals,' over which his father presided. 

These are but a few examples taken from the 
lives of popes who lived and reigned since the 
time of Adrian and Alexander, and during the time 
that the Irish people have been taking so large a 
share of their politics from Rome. 

The power and prestige of the papacy have 



1 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 366, 374, 393 and 412. 

2 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 266, 279, and 436. 

3 Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 360. 

4 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 298 and 437. 

5 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 343 and 356. 

6 There was nothing illicit in this. The Pope was a married layman. 
The cardinals are not bound to choose one of their own body; a layman,, 
and even a married man may be lawfully elected." Catholic Die, p. 679. 

7 Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 356. 



PAPAL FAMILIES. IO5 

always excited the most consuming ambitions and 
burning jealousies among the eligible families. 

Each family, and combinations of families, in 
turn, sought to gain control of the College of Car- 
dinals. 

An example of this is given in the life of Alex- 
ander VI., who, " To satisfy his ambition and ex- 
alt the princes of his own family, too often out- 
raged the laws of justice. It was with such views 
that he sought the ruin ot the houses of Colonna 
and Orsini."* 

This Borgia family was originally from Spain, 
and Earle, with Hefele and others, speak of Alex- 
ander VI. as an exceptionally "unworthy pope." 
This is undoubtedly true, but it does not alter the 
fact that the papacy has been in the hands of a 
very wicked, ambitious and designing man, who 
was duly elected to the papal chair and filled it 
for nine years, and that if he had succeeded in 
doing what his more favored Italian predecessors 
did, the Borgia family, instead of being hunted 
from Italy by Pope Julius II., as they were, might 
still be in control of the Vatican, making political 
trades with England and issuing rescripts to Ire- 
land ; for, if they had once secured the necessary 
majority of their own family in the college, no 

* Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 357 ; quoting Mariana, Lib. 26. 



I06 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

power in or out of the church could have di-s 
lodged them. 

Besides, no candid historian will claim that Al- 
exander VI. was any worse than his predecessors, 
Sergius III., John X., John XI., John XII., John 
XVI., or John XIX., the first three of whom were 
" elevated to the papal throne by the intrigues of 
the notorious Marozia,"* and the last of whom, 
with Benedict VIII., tried to have the Holy See 
made a legal '''inheritance in their family y^ 

These, bear in mind, were not anti-popes, but 
duly elected and recognized popes of the church, 
although Sergius III. was, for some years, an anti- 
pope before being elected to the papal chair. J 

V^e had, recently, an illustration of the nepotism 
and family influence still prevailing at the Vati- 
can, in that, while the Irish priesthood, represent- 
ing more genuine Catholics than does the Italian 
priesthood, had not a single representative in the 
College of Cardinals, and while the Italians had 
more than a two-thirds majority of that college, 
two youthful offshoots of the effete Italian nobility 
were sent to Queen Victoria, also a temporal and 
spiritual sovereign (head of the Episcopal Church) 
with some sort of a trinket as a jubilee gift, and, 

* Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 187, 190-2. 
t Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 209. 
X Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 185-7. 



ORIGIN OF THE CARDINALS. lOj 

on its safe delivery, to honor the Queen, they were 
both created cardinals. This is also an illustra- 
tion of the closer relation between the ''nobilities" 
of England and Italy than exists between the Ital- 
ans and their Irish co-religionists. 

The political scheming which has been resorted 
to for the purpose of securing control of the 'Holy 
See was worthy of modern political bosses, and is 
very interesting. 

The Pope, who for the first six hundred years 
after Christ, was recognized simply as the Bishop 
of Rome, and exercised no jurisdiction beyond that 
See, was, until the year 1059 "chosen like other 
bishops by the clergy and people, with the assent 
of the neighboring bishops."* 

In that year (1059) the College of Cardinals 
was instituted and consisted of six bishops.f The 
number of cardinals was gradually increased by 
succeeding popes, very much as our United States 
Supreme Court has been increased, and, no doubt, 
for the same purpose, namely : to change from 
time to time the balance of power. This practice 
continued for over five hundred years, when, in 
1586, the number was finally fixed at not exceed- 
ing seventy. J 

* Catholic Die, p. 678. 
t Catholic Die, 1 18, 679. 
X Catholic Die, 119. 



I08 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

The Holy See, as thus constituted, claims the 
Divine right to exercise political as well as relig- 
ious sovereignty in every country. This claim 
was emphasized by Monsignor Preston, Vicar Gen- 
eral of the Arch-diocese of New York, in his " New 
Year's Sermon" (January, 1888) in which he 
said: *'' Whoever says, I will take my religion 
from Rome but not my politics, is not a good 
Catholic.''' 

But it needed not the assurance of Monsignor 
Preston to advise us of the Pope's claim of tem- 
poral authority over his religious followers. 

Prior to the year 860 the Pope was inducted 
into office as "Vicar of our Savior Jesus Christ," 
and the miter was placed upon his head as one of 
the emblems of his priestly authority. 

Some time between the years 85 8 and 867, 

Pope Nicholas I. united a kingly crown with the 

miter, and between that time and the year 1200 

(the exact date is uncertain), a second crown was 

added,* and the third crown was added about the 

year 1370, thus completing the tiara. 
ft 
Ever since that time, " The tiara is placed on 

the Pope's head, at his coronation, by the second 

Cardinal Deacon, in the loggia of St. Peter's, with 

the words, ' Receive the tiara adorned with three 

Catholic Die, p. 796 



THE RESCRIPT POLITICAL. IO9 

crowns, and know that thou art Father of Princes 
and Kings, Ruler of the World, Vicar of our Sa- 
vior Jesus Christ '."'^' 

Even in this coronation ceremony, as in the 
practice of the Vatican, the religious office is sub- 
ordinated to the political offices. 

In face of all these undenied and undeniable 
facts, how silly it is to enter into nice disputations 
about the religious character of the Pope's rescript. 

The rescript was issued by the Pope as a tem- 
poral sovereign, was intended as a political edict, 
and obedience to it will be an acknowledgment 
that the self-revolving, self-perpetuating Italian 
Ring which I have described, has a Divine right 
to rule in the political affairs of Ireland. 

It can have no other meaning. 

* Catholic Die, p. 796, citing "Beitiage," by Bishop Hefele, Vol. II., p. 
236, et. seq. 



no IRELAND AND THE POPE. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

CONCLUSION. 

The true and manly position of the Irish 
people in this matter must be, that, whatever its 
purpose, the rescript is an impudent interference 
with Irish politics and ought to be promptly and 
effectually repudiated. 

It will not do to change the movement in order 
to avoid the letter, or meet the spirit, of the re- 
script, for that will instantly destroy the confix 
dence of sympathizers everywhere. 

Well may such sympathizers ask, as many even 
now are asking: What is the use of helping Irish 
movements if the Pope can still kill them, as for 
seven hundred years he has been killing them, just 
at the critical moment of dawning victory } 

A quietus must now and forever be put upon 
Irish political rescripts from Rome. Otherwise 
confidence in " Irish movements " will be, for an- 
other generation, absolutely destroyed. 

The spirit displayed by so many thousands of the 
Irish people, both in Ireland and America, in their 
protests against this latest edict, is most gratifying 
and encouraging; but there have also been mani- 



CONCLUSION — STOP PETERS PENCE. Ill 

fested some of the old and fatal symptoms of dis- 
integration, which have always been observed to 
follow papal rescripts. For example, at the meet- 
ing held in Limerick on Sunday, May 27th, while 
twenty thousand enthusiastic people, in spite of 
the bishop's anathemas, attended, it was observed 
that " there were no priests present, and the lead- 
ing Catholics, who had previously been conspicu- 
ous at the meetings, were to-day conspicuous by 
their absence," 

The meaning of this is too plain to students of 
Irish history. 

It means, unless checked by prompt and effec- 
tive measures, disintegration and death to the 
Irish Home Rule movement. 

Are there no patriotic priests in Limerick ? 
Yes, but true to the prophecies of Burke and Pitt 
and Shell, Maynooth and Rome have established 
in them a prmciple of subserviency stronger than 
their patriotism — a readiness to sacrifice the in- 
terests of Ireland and the hopes and aspirations of 
her people to the discipline imposed by the church 
authorities at Rome. 

In this crisis and in the future political struggles 
it is manifest that one of two things must be done : 
the Irish priests must break away from their slav- 
ish subserviency to the Italian Ring and reassume 



112 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 

the independent position which was held by the 
clergy of Ireland from the time of St. Patrick to 
the coming of Cardinal Paparo ; or if that, unfortu- 
nately, cannot be, then the people must break 
away from all political alliance with the priesthood 
and absolutely reject it as an element in political 
affairs ; or finally, failing both of these, the Irish 
people must be content to wear the chain of Eng- 
land with the chain of Rome, until some future 
generation shall discard both chains together. 

It is not necessary that any change should be 
made, either by priest or people, in their religion. 

There were Irish saints, afterwards canonized 
by the Roman Church, who never recognized any 
allegiance to the See of Rome, except to receive 
the abstract doctrines of Catholicity from that cen- 
tre ; but I venture, on the authority of their 
canonization, to say, that they were at least as good 
Catholics as any of the ultramontane Irishmen 
of the present day. 

Neither is it necessary that there should be any 
change in their relations to the church as an or- 
ganization, but only that the Roman hierarchy be 
held strictly to their spiritual trust and boycotted, 
if necessary, out of their political pretensions. 

If the people of Ireland would, by general con- 
cert of action, suspend payments on the bill of 



CONCLUSION STOP PETERS PENCE. II3 

sale of Ireland, given by Pope Adrian to King 
Henry II., until the liberty which that instrument 
blasted shall be recovered, nothing more would be 
heard forever of papal interference with Irish pol- 
itics, and the Irish priests would be left free to 
hasten the renewal of tribute. 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 



Of the many of the authorities which I have cited, there are several editions 
differently paged. To avoid misleading and hyper-criticism, I here insert a list of 
my authorities with the edition referred to: 



TITLE. 
History of Ireland 
History of Ireland 
History of Ireland 
History of Ireland 
History of Ireland 
History of Ireland 
History of Ireland 
History of Ireland 
History of Ireland 
Irish before the Conquest 
Irish Hierarchy 
Ecclesiastical Hist, of Ireland 
Irish Landlord, The 
Ireland As She Is 
Ireland of To-day 
New Ireland 

History of Our Own Times 
Outlines of Irish History 
Ireland Since the Union 
Lights and Shades of Ireland 
The Parnell Movement 
Catholic Dictionary 
The Last Four Popes 
Life of Pius IX. 
Lives of the Popes 
The Pope 
English Misrule 



EDITION. 
Kelly, 1885 
Virtue, E. & R., 1845 
First 

2nd O'Kelly's Trans. 
Cameron & F. 
Kenmare Convent, i 876 
Donahoe, 1857 
Virtue, E. & R., 1845 
Cameron & F. 
First 

Sadlier, 1855 
Cummisky, 1838 
Donahoe, 1870 
Kelly, 1877 
Bancroft, 1881 
Third 

Belford, C. & Co., 1887 
First 

Belford, C. & Co., 1887 
French, 1851 
Benziger, 1886 
Catholic Pub. Society, 1 8i 
Donahoe, 1858 
Kelly, 1877 
Kelly, 1877 
Pustet, 1885 
Lynch, C. & M., 1877 



AUTHOR. 
M. Haverty 
S. O'Halloran 
Thos. Wright 
Abbe MacGeoghegan 
D'Arcy McGee 
M. F. Cusack 
Thos. Mooney 
Wm. Dolby 
John Mitchell 
M. C. Ferguson 
Rev. Thos. Walsh 
Rev. P. J. Carew 
Rev. P. Lavelle 
J. J. Clancy 
M. F. Sullivan 
A. M. Sullivan 
Justin McCarthy 
Justin McCarthy 
Justin McCarthy 
Mrs. A. Nicholson 
T. P. O'Connor 
Addis & Arnold 
Cardinal Wiseman 
J. G. Shea 
J. C. Earle 
Monsignor Capel 
Rev. T. N. Burke 



APPENDIX A. 



Full translation of the Bull of Pope Adrian IV. , granting Ireland to King 
Henry II. 

[From O'Halloran's History of Ireland, p. 305.] . 

"Adrian, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his dearest son in 
Christ, the illustrious King of England, greeting, and apostolical benediction: 

"Full laudably and profitably hath your magnificence conceived the 
design of propagating your glorious renown on earth, and completing your 
reward of eternal happiness in heaven ; while as a Cathohc prince, you are 
intent on enlarging the borders of the church, teaching the truth of the 
Christian faith to the ignorant and rude, extirpating the roots of vice from 
the field of the Lord, and for the more convenient execution of this purpose, 
requiring the counsel and favor of the apostolic See, in which the maturer 
your deliberation and the greater the discretion of your procedure, by so 
much the happier we trust will be your progress, with the assistance of the 
Lord, as all things are used to come to a prosperous end and issue, which 
take their beginning from the ardor of faith and the love of religion. 

"There is, indeed, no doubt but that Ireland, and all the islands on which 
Christ, the sun of righteousness hath shone, and which have received the 
doctrine of the Christian faith, do belong to the jurisdiction of St; Peter and 
the Holy Roman Church, as your excellency also doth acknowledge; and 
therefore, we are the more solicitous to propagate the righteous plantation 
of faith in this land, and the branch acceptable to God, as we have the 
secret conviction of conscience that this is more especially our bound en 
duty. You then, my dear son in Christ, have signified to us your desire to 
enter into the island of Ireland, in order to reduce the people to obedience 
under the laws, and to extirpate the plants of vice; and that you are willing 
to pay from each [house] a yearly pension of one penny to St. Peter, and that 
will preserve the rights of the churches of the land whole and inviolate. 
We, therefore, with that grace and acceptance suited to your pious and laud- 
able design, and favorably assenting to your petition, do hold it good and 
acceptable, that, for extending the borders of the church, restraining the 



I I 6 APPENDIX. 

progress of vice, for the correction of manners, the planting of virtue, and 
the increase of reUgion, you enter this island, and execute therein whatever 
shall pertain to the honor of God and welfare of the land ; and that the 
people of this land receive you honorably, and reverence you as their lord ; 
the rights of their churches still remaining sacred and inviolate, and saving 
to St. Peter the annual pension of one penny from every house. 

"If then you be resolved to carry the design you have conceived into 
effectual execution, study to form this nation to virtue and manners, and 
labor by yourself, and others you shall judge meet for this work, in faith, 
word, and life, that the church may be there adorned ; that the religion of 
the Christian faith may be planted and grow up, and that all things pertain- 
ing to the honor of God, and salvation of souls, be so ordered, that you may 
be entitled to the fulness of heavenly reward from God, and obtain a glo- 
rious renown on earth throughout all ages. Given at Rome, in the year of 
Salvation 1156." 



APPENDIX B. 



Full translation of the Bull of Pope Alexander III., confirming the grant 
of Adrian. 

[From O'Halloran's History of Ireland, page 306.] 

"Alexander, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his most dear son 
in Christ, the illustrious King of England, health and apostohcal benediction. 

"Forasmuch as these things, which have been on good reasons granted by 
our predecessors, deserve to be confirmed in the fullest manner, and con- 
sidering the grant of the dominion of the realm of Ireland by the venerable 
Pope Adrian, we, pursuing his footsteps, do ratify and confirm the same, 
(reserving to St. Peter, and to the Holy Roman Church, as well in England 
as in Ireland, the yearly pension of one penny from every house) provided 
that the abominations of the land being removed, that barbarous people, 
Christians only in name, may, by your means, be reformed, and their live^ 
and conversation mended, so that their disordered church being thus re- 
duced to regular discipHne, that nation may, with the name of Christians, 
be so in act and deed. Given at Rome, in the year of Salvation 1172." 



APPENDIX. I I 7 

APPENDIX C. 

THE TEXT OF THE LAST RESCRIPT. 

(From the "Dublin Freeman," May 5th, 1888.) 

The following is a translation of the Latin text of the circular addressed 
by the Congregation of the Holy Office to the Irish Bishops in reference to 
the Plan of Campaign and to boycotting: — 

My Lord — A letter was issued by the Supreme Congregation of the 
Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition on the 20th of the present month of 
April, for transmission to the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland. 

Herewith I send your Lordship a copy of this letter, and having dis- 
charged this duty, and wishmg you every blessing in the Lord, I remain 

yours devotedly, 

John Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect. 

^ D. Archbishop of Tyre, Secretary. 

S. Congregation of the Propaganda, Rome, April 23rd, 1888. 

[COPY.] 

My Lord— Whenever the affairs of their country seemed to require it the 
Apostolic See has frequently addressed to the Irish people — towards whom 
it has always shown special affection — seasonable words of warning and 
counsel with the object of enabling them to defend or to assert their rights 
without prejudice to justice or to public tranquillity. At the present mo- 
ment our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII., fearing lest right conceptions of 
justice and charity should be perverted amongst that people in consequence 
of that mode of warfare called the Plan of Campaign, which has been em- 
ployed in that country in contests between letters and holders of lands or 
farms, as also in consequence of a form of proscription in connection with 
the same contests known as boycotting, commissioned the Supreme Con- 
gregation of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition to make the matter 
the subject of grave and careful examination. Accordingly the following 
question was submitted to the Most Eminent Fathers who share with me 
the office of General Inquisitors against heretical error, viz: In contests be- 
tween letters and holders of lands or farms in Ireland is it lawful to have 
recourse to those means known as the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting — 



Il8 APPENDIX. 

and their Eminences, having long and maturely weighed the matter, re- 
plied in the negative. 

Our Holy Father confirmed and approved this reply on Wednesday, the 
18th of the present month. 

How equitable this decision is any one will see who reflects that a rent 
fixed by mutual consent cannot, without violation of contract, be reduced 
at the arbitrary will of the tenant alone. This the more, since for the set- 
tling of such contests courts have been established wliich, allowance being 
made even for failure of crops or of disasters which may have occurred, re- 
duce excessive rents and bring them within the limits of equity. 

Again, it cannot be held to be lawful that rent should be extorted from 
tenants and deposited with unknown persons, no account being taken of the 
landlord. 

Finally, it is altogether foreign to natural justice and to Christian charity 
that a new form of persecution and of proscription should ruthlessly be put 
in force against persons who are satisfied with, and are prepared to pay the 
rent agreed on with their "landlord; or against persons who in the exercise 
of their right take vacant farms. 

Your lordship will therefore — prudently but effectively — admonish the 
clergy and the people in reference to this matter , and exhort them to ob- 
serve Christian charity, and not to overstep the bounds of justice whilst 
seeking relief from the evils which afflict them. — Your devoted servant in 
the Lord, R. Card, Monaco. 

Rome, 20th April, 1888. 



LIBHAKY Ul- UUNUHtbb 



021 356 774 3 



